Hans Hermann-Hoppe on the mass delusion of democratic government

The mass of people, as La Boetie and Mises recognized, always and everywhere consists of "brutes," "dullards," and "fools," easily deluded and sunk into habitual submission.  Thus today, inundated from early childhood with government propaganda in public schools and educational institutions by legions of publicly certified intellectuals, most people mindlessly accept and repeat nonsense such as that democracy is self-rule and government is of, by, and for the people.  Even if they can see through the deception, most still unquestioningly accept democratic government on account of the fact that it provides them with a multitude of goods and benefits.  Such "fools," observed La Boetie, do not realize that they are "merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them.  Thus, every social revolution will necessarily have to begin with just a few uncommon men: the natural elite.

~ Hans Hermann-Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed, p. 92