Quoting AlLanMandragoran,
@Sinperium,
"Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure-one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." - David Rockefeller
I am well aware of individuals like Rockefeller who believed the elite--like himself--were the only ones fit to decide for others how they should live...and it is of course, for their own good.
Margaret Sanger who was concerned for women's health and freedom also promoted eugenics and forced sterilization of the mentally disabled and generationally and chronically poor--all as a "progressive" agenda for "their own good".
Stalin starved ten million Ukrainians to death while they lived in one of the worlds largest grain exporting countries, for the good of those people Mao-Tse Tung was responsible for the deaths of as many as sixty-million in his march to "help the working man".
The French Revolutionary council rounded up people in the street suspected of having 'wrong ideas" and tortured and executed them with amusement and disdain while crowds clapped and cheered--all in the name of Liberte' for the common people.
You can add to the list--it goes back to the earliest times of history in every nation. The examples I give above though happened mostly in contemporary times and were headed by progressive "intellectuals". They didn't occur in a feudal society in the dark ages or in days when burned sacrifices were offered at hill top shrines.
What they all have in common is they were led by people who used hate and the appearance of seeking individual freedom and justice to further plans to deprive people of their liberty and even their lives in order that they could make people do what they wanted them to do.
By virtue of the government we have, its ability to wrongly wield power is directly proportionate to the extent the people within it allow it to do so. Sadly that means that when we are an uniformed, selfish and ignorant populace we get a government that is representative of that. "We" are the government (here in the US).
What astounds me is the thinking that new party bosses or mullahs or Napoleons will "make it right" if we only tear down existing society and its structure and ideals. It's the same song that's been on the radio since governments began.
“Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.” --Percy Shelle, poet.
“It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope” --Niccolo Machiavelli
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." -- Sir Winston Churchill
I'll close with a quotes from the Old Testament and Churchill:
And he said, “This will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place them for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots. “And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and some to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. “He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers. “And he will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. “And he will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards, and give to his officers and to his servants. “He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys, and use them for his work. “He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants. “Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day”
What's intersting is that up to that point Israel had prophets who instructed the people to be moral and corrected them when they erred--with the onus being on the individual to then be responsible for his or her own behavior and its consequences.Instead, the people wanted "someone else" to "do it for them".
Regardless of how you feel about the book, the point is valid. People clump together and look for a "savior like them" to whom they can give absolute power in order to make people by force do what they want. That's evil.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." --Sir Winston Churchill (who 25% of Britain's polled think is a fictional character)