It seems to me that many people believe that we human beings left undirected by a sovereign power are either inert blobs, capable of achieving nothing, or unintelligent and brutal barbarians destined only to rob, rape, plunder, and kill each other until and unless a sovereign power restrains us and directs our energies onto more productive avenues. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was believed that the beneficent sovereign power must be monarchial; in the 19th, 20th, and (so far) 21st centuries it is believed that the beneficent sovereign power must be “the People,” usually in the form of democratic majorities. We moderns applaud ourselves for having discarded our ancestors’ unenlightened attachment to monarchy and for our having replaced that attachment with an attachment to majoritarian nationalist democracy. We moderns do not understand that our attachment to nationalist sovereignty itself is a far more dangerous superstition than is an attachment to a variety of sovereignty other than majoritarian nationalist democracy.
Don Boudreaux, “Bonus Quotation of the Day…”, Café Hayek, 2017-11-25.
