≡ Menu

Quotation of the Day…

… is from page 19 of the 1991 Liberty Fund edition of Bruno Leoni’s indispensable 1961 volume, Freedom and the Law:

This faith [in majoritarian democracy] may prevent one from recognizing that the more numerous the people are whom one tries to “represent” through the legislative process and the more numerous the matters in which one tries to represent them, the less the word “representation” has a meaning referable to the actual will of actual people other than that of the persons named as their “representatives.”

This truth, as undeniable as it is simple, is almost wholly lost on, or ignored by, people who insist that, even in large polities, regular and corruption-free elections with wide franchises are sufficient to keep the power of the state in check and, hence, to keep the power of the state deployed overwhelmingly in service to the public good.

Comments