What must be realized is the strait jacket of bureaucratic organization paralyzes the individual's initiative for stagnation and preservation of inveterate methods.

Whether one likes it or not, it is the first duty of a citizen in a democratic community to educate himself and to acquire the knowledge needed for dealing with civic affairs.

The franchise is not a privilege but a duty and a moral responsibility.

The voter is virtually an officeholder; his office is the supreme one and implies the highest obligation.

Intelligent men are not only frivolous but mischievous in neglecting to educate and instruct themselves for the best performance of their duties as sovereign voters.

What is needed above all is common sense and logical clarity. Go right to the bottom of things is the main rule. Do not acquiesce in superficial explanations and solutions. Use your power of thinking and your critical abilities.

The recognition and pronouncement of truth is as such a condemnation of everything that is untrue. It carries on by the mere fact of being true. Therefore let the false prophets go on. Do not try to imitate their policies. Do not try as they do to silence and to outlaw dissenters. The liars must be afraid of truth and are therefore driven to suppress its pronouncement.


But the advocates of truth put their hopes upon their own rightness. Veracity does not fear the liars. It can stand their competition. The propagandists may continue to spread their fables and to indoctrinate youth. They will fail lamentably

The most detrimental outcome of the average citizen's repugnance to a serious concern with economic problems is his readiness to back a program of compromise.

As he himself is not prepared to appraise the merits of the arguments advanced by each of the parties, he thinks it would be a fair solution to end the dispute by an amicable arrangement: each claimant should have a part of his claim.

The great historical conflict concerning the problem of society's economic organization cannot be dealt with like a quarrel between two businessmen concerning an amount of money; it cannot be solved by splitting the difference.

Economic interventionism is a self-defeating policy. The individual measures that it applies do not achieve the results sought. They bring about a state of affairs, which---- from the viewpoint of its advocates themselves-is much more undesirable than the previous state they intended to alter.

It would be a fateful error for the citizens to leave concern with economic studies to the professionals as their exclusive domain. As the main issues of present-day politics are essentially economic, such a resignation would amount to a complete abdication of the citizens for the benefit of the professionals.



Democracy becomes impracticable if the eminent citizens, the intellectual leaders of the community, are not in a position to form their own opinion on the basic social, economic, and political principles of policies. If the citizens are under the intellectual hegemony of the bureaucratic professionals, society breaks up into two castes: the ruling professionals, the Brahmin's, and the gullible citizenry. Then despotism emerges, whatever the wording of constitutions and laws may be. Democracy means self-determination. How can people determine their own affairs if they are too indifferent to gain through their own thinking an independent judgment on fundamental political and economic problems? Democracy is not a good that people can enjoy without trouble. It is, on the contrary, a treasure that must be daily defended and conquered anew by strenuous effort.