"Faced with these choices between the hard and the soft, the normal propensity of democratic governments is to please the largest number of voters. The pressure of the electorate is normally for the soft side of the equations. That is why governments are unable to cope with reality when elected assemblies and mass opinions become decisive in the state, when there are no statesmen to resist the inclination of the voters and there are only politicians to excite and exploit them.
There is then a general tendency to be drawn downward, as by the force of gravity, towards insolvency, towards the insecurity of factionalism, towards the erosion of liberty, and towards hyperbolic wars." (Walter Lippmann, pp. 45-6.)

Thus, democracy, as past experience will demonstrate, works only where the population shares, fundamentally, the same goals and aspirations. Historically, God and country have been the two banners under which the great masses could proudly stand; but, in a modern society, God and country mean less and less, while, at the same time, the goals and aspirations of various groups increase and diverge. It maybe that democracy is, and, indeed, has always been, unworkable; but we must continue to hold the ideal high and see to it that its trappings are securely fixed in place as, well -- as a bulwark, such as it is, against tyrannical rule.12

The reality is that we are forever fixed with an oligarchy (government of the few) masquerading as a democracy. The purpose of the ruling few is to execute its constitutional functions, which, because democracy is unworkable, should be tightly circumscribed. The ideal of democracy is to be promoted, as it has been, to the rulers and the ruled, as a sacred icon; never mind that it cannot be used to put a society into action, to pass laws, and never mind that it will rarely cast up honest and wise leaders; it is, in the final analysis, a system that will routinely and inexpensively rotate those in charge; a manner of bloodlessly changing the guard.