… is from pages 104-105 of Walter Lippmann’s often deeply insightful (yet also often deeply flawed) 1937 book, The Good Society; this quotation is among my all-time favorites from anyone at any time, and it seems to be especially appropriate on an election day (emphasis added):
Though it is disguised by the illusion that a bureaucracy accountable to a majority of voters, and susceptible to the pressure of organized minorities, is not exercising compulsion, it is evident that the more varied and comprehensive the regulation becomes, the more the state becomes a despotic power as against the individual. For the fragment of control over the government which he exercises through his vote is in no effective sense proportionate to the authority exercised over him by the government.
