Development of the State

71:2.1Democ­racy, while an ideal, is a prod­uct of civ­i­liza­tion, not of evo­lu­tion. Go slowly! se­lect care­fully! for the dan­gers of democ­racy are:

71:2.21. Glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of medi­ocrity.

71:2.32. Choice of base and ig­no­rant rulers.

71:2.43. Fail­ure to rec­og­nize the ba­sic facts of so­cial evo­lu­tion.

71:2.54. Dan­ger of uni­ver­sal suf­frage in the hands of un­e­d­u­cated and in­do­lent ma­jori­ties.

71:2.65. Slav­ery to pub­lic opin­ion; the ma­jor­ity is not al­ways right.

71:2.7Pub­lic opin­ion, com­mon opin­ion, has al­ways de­layed so­ci­ety; nev­er­the­less, it is valu­able, for, while re­tard­ing so­cial evo­lu­tion, it does pre­serve civ­i­liza­tion. Ed­u­ca­tion of pub­lic opin­ion is the only safe and true method of ac­cel­er­at­ing civ­i­liza­tion; force is only a tem­po­rary ex­pe­di­ent, and cul­tural growth will in­creas­ingly ac­cel­er­ate as bul­lets give way to bal­lots. Pub­lic opin­ion, the mores, is the ba­sic and el­e­men­tal en­ergy in so­cial evo­lu­tion and state de­vel­op­ment, but to be of state value it must be non­vi­o­lent in ex­pres­sion.

71:2.8The mea­sure of the ad­vance of so­ci­ety is di­rectly de­ter­mined by the de­gree to which pub­lic opin­ion can con­trol per­sonal be­hav­ior and state reg­u­la­tion through non­vi­o­lent ex­pres­sion. The re­ally civ­i­lized gov­ern­ment had ar­rived when pub­lic opin­ion was clothed with the pow­ers of per­sonal fran­chise. Pop­u­lar elec­tions may not al­ways de­cide things rightly, but they rep­re­sent the right way even to do a wrong thing. Evo­lu­tion does not at once pro­duce su­perla­tive per­fec­tion but rather com­par­a­tive and ad­vanc­ing prac­ti­cal ad­just­ment.

71:2.9There are ten steps, or stages, to the evo­lu­tion of a prac­ti­cal and ef­fi­cient form of rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment, and these are:

71:2.101. Free­dom of the per­son. Slav­ery, serf­dom, and all forms of hu­man bond­age must dis­ap­pear.

71:2.112. Free­dom of the mind. Un­less a free peo­ple are ed­u­cated—taught to think in­tel­li­gently and plan wisely—free­dom usu­ally does more harm than good.

71:2.123. The reign of law. Lib­erty can be en­joyed only when the will and whims of hu­man rulers are re­placed by leg­isla­tive en­act­ments in ac­cor­dance with ac­cepted fun­da­men­tal law.

71:2.134. Free­dom of speech. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment is un­think­able with­out free­dom of all forms of ex­pres­sion for hu­man as­pi­ra­tions and opin­ions.

71:2.145. Se­cu­rity of prop­erty. No gov­ern­ment can long en­dure if it fails to pro­vide for the right to en­joy per­sonal prop­erty in some form. Man craves the right to use, con­trol, be­stow, sell, lease, and be­queath his per­sonal prop­erty.

71:2.156. The right of pe­ti­tion. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment as­sumes the right of cit­i­zens to be heard. The priv­i­lege of pe­ti­tion is in­her­ent in free cit­i­zen­ship.

71:2.167. The right to rule. It is not enough to be heard; the power of pe­ti­tion must pro­gress to the ac­tual man­age­ment of the gov­ern­ment.

71:2.178. Uni­ver­sal suf­frage. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment pre­sup­poses an in­tel­li­gent, ef­fi­cient, and uni­ver­sal elec­torate. The char­ac­ter of such a gov­ern­ment will ever be de­ter­mined by the char­ac­ter and cal­iber of those who com­pose it. As civ­i­liza­tion pro­gresses, suf­frage, while re­main­ing uni­ver­sal for both sexes, will be ef­fec­tively mod­i­fied, re­grouped, and oth­er­wise dif­fer­en­ti­ated.

71:2.189. Con­trol of pub­lic ser­vants. No civil gov­ern­ment will be ser­vice­able and ef­fec­tive un­less the cit­i­zenry pos­sess and use wise tech­niques of guid­ing and con­trol­ling of­fice­hold­ers and pub­lic ser­vants.

71:2.1910. In­tel­li­gent and trained rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The sur­vival of democ­racy is de­pen­dent on suc­cess­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment; and that is con­di­tioned upon the prac­tice of elect­ing to pub­lic of­fices only those in­di­vid­u­als who are tech­ni­cally trained, in­tel­lec­tu­ally com­pe­tent, so­cially loyal, and morally fit. Only by such pro­vi­sions can gov­ern­ment of the peo­ple, by the peo­ple, and for the peo­ple be pre­served.