[spence]

Originally Posted by detbuch

You don't seem to grasp the method toward "total" control of the people employed by "soft tyranny" or "soft despotism." A soft despot is one who believes he has the well-being of the people as his goal, but that the people do not know what is best for them. He must convince them that he knows best and should be trusted with their welfare more than they themselves. He does that with language, often Orwellian, more than with weapons. As Woodrow Wilson said in his "The Study of Administration":

"Whoever would effect a change in a modern constitutional government must first educate his fellow-citizens to want some change. That done, he must persuade them to want the particular change he wants. He must first make public opinion willing to listen and then see to it that it listen to the right things. He must stir it up to search for an opinion, and then manage to put the right opinion it its way."

In America he must effect that change in its Constitution by transforming it from an immutable law that protects individual inalienable rights inherited by their nature and granted by nature's God, to a living and changeable system of government which grants those rights and without which there are no rights. And that government will be by men, not by law, and by men who are "experts," who will be the trustees and administrators of the good that will be regulated for and to the people.

And, as competent admistrators, the soft despots must not allow the people to become fat and diabetic, for that would create a financial, distributive, and moral burden on society, and especially on the administration. Limit and regulate the amount of fats and sugars in packaged foods, for instance, and regulate the size of soft drinks and tax and regulate destructive behaviour such as smoking, etc.

I see, so the majority doesn't want stronger gun control because it's a rationally thought out position...but because their feeble minds have been controlled. Nice...

It's interesting you've quoted Wilson as some thought leader in progressive manipulation as casually as ScottW likes to trot out Saul Alinksy.

I like the text that precedes your quote:

Wherever regard for public opinion is a first principle of government, practical reform must be slow and all reform must be full of compromises. For wherever public opinion exists it must rule. This is now an axiom half the world over, and will presently come to be believed even in Russia.

Context is important here as at the time Alexander III was brutally cracking down on dissent against the will of the people.

-spence