For much of our history many Western thinkers have shared the ideal of bringing the circumstances of our life under our rational control. This ideal has been applied both to our individual lives and to societies as a whole. Yet attempting to attain this ideal in one of these realms immediately negates it in the other. To control a society is to turn it into an instrumental organization pursuing a goal, such as Robert Dahl’s ideal of substantitve political equality. Individuals within that society necessarily become organization resources who are socially valuable only to the extent they assist their leadership in achieving its goal. They are like employees...They are disempowered...They are not self-governing. If, on the other hand, individuals are empowered to act by their own lights, and each chooses on the basis of his or her judgment, it makes no sense to say that the society in which they live should follow a goal.
DIZERGA, GUS, Persuasion, Power and Polity, A Theory of Democratic Self-Organization, Chapter Five[T]he evil is, that individual spontaneity is hardly recognized by the common modes of thinking as having any intrinsic worth, or deserving any regard in its own account. The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are...cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody.
MILL, JOHN STUART, On Liberty, Chapter 3Plato is the father of collectivism in the West....When men gather in society, says Plato, the unit of reality, and the standard of value, is the "community as a whole." Each man therefore must strive, as far as he can, to wipe out his individuality (his personal desires, ambitions, etc.) and merge himself into the community, becoming one with it and living only to serve its welfare...The advocacy of the omnipotent state follows...The function and authority of the state...should be unlimited. The state should indoctrinate the citizens and government-approved ideas in government-run schools, censor all art and literature and philosophy, assign men their vocations...regulate their economic-and in certain cases even their sexual activities.
PEIKOFF, LEONARD, The Ominous ParallelsPlato’s Republic and Laws...are the first blueprint of the totalitarian ideal.
PEIKOFF, LEONARD, The Ominous Parallels[C]onservatives...liberal[s]...both sides are increasingly buying into the central premise of tyranny...that society is a primary and individual rights are derivative. This notion stands in contrast to the Jeffersonian view that rights are primary and that government, therefore, derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.
SANDEFUR, TIMOTHY, Jefferson, Lincoln and Bork, Liberty, January 2001, p. 56‘The will of the nation’ is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.
TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE, Democracy in America, Chapter IV