At some point, this amount of disagreement does nothing but push us all down collectively to a level that is enough evidence that none of us are worthy of choosing what is right and good for the collective of the human race, versus what is wrong and should be avoidable.

That says more for those of us who supposedly represent the authority than it does for citizens reacting to these crimes, but it still goes for all of us.

There is so much blindness in this thread on every side, and that does not exclude my own. Ultimately we're all swayed by our personal experiences. The sum of all arguments is nearly impossible to calculate, but it's there.
I don't care much for "law" as it's practiced today, and there is plenty of evidence online to support any orderly or bigoted perspective if you care to weigh it that subjectively, but pertaining to videos such as these, here is what you cannot deny regardless of your position:

Minorities will always have the lesser voice, and be exploited, intentionally or unintentionally, by the authority.

Around the world, at all times, though perhaps more now than the last few decades, the majority of government authority is responding to the fear that has been shown prevalently in media and culture for at least a generation.

The proper solution for all of our kind is a way for authoritative powers to understand that when there is a diplomatic minority large enough to warrant force as a response, force is no longer the appropriate answer. Otherwise, at this point, you have to allow voice to this community or you are a verifiable dictatorship/tyrant/oppressor or despot, and no longer the best representation of your collective people.

In the end, the discussions that all forums ultimately fall into is one that simply tries to snuff the other out. Lantern53 is a a verifiable, uneducated menace, ass, and an example of the ignorance that is readily welcomed by an all-to-eager agency whose present desire is to employ thugs more than representatives of the people.

However we, collectively, need that voice. We need to know who in our society has such widely disparate views in order to regulate and balance our own perspectives. It is healthy to encounter perspectives that are not your own, and it's up to everyone and each individual to temperate our reactions, despite how offensive they might be. In that sense, people such as Lantern, BobKnight, Shiny, Choggie, and all the other "assholes" who've sifted through the sift, possess a little more bravery than most of us. (Or they're trolls, but in communities such as the sift, they're more likely just angry people with a drastically alternate perspective from the majority).

The next time you encounter someone like Lantern, just take their perspective and defeat them with logic and reason. If you don't have the knowledge to do so, research factual evidence to do it. If you cannot find factual evidence to do so, you may well be in the wrong.

I have; everyone has. It just comes down to trying to shout into submission those with different views - or - converting them to an understanding perspective with reason and evidence. It's not a one-side versus the other, either. It must go back and forth to a certain extent, because that is how you reach mutual understanding.

If all else fails, y'know, find out their address and bring a tire-iron.

From the reports so far (no clue to the veracity of them, just as there's no clue to the veracity of your 'reports') a group of about 5000 have so far, taken nearly 1/2 the country and 'informed' the populace that if they are the wrong sect of Muslim they must leave (or be killed)...they have massacred, raped, punished, tortured, and on...publicly and proudly (which makes them more dangerous, because they don't consider what they do is wrong, Saddam did but did it anyway). EDIT: they are gaining in numbers and power FAST...if they reached the level of power Saddam had and follow through on their 'promises', there will be millions killed and far more displaced.
Fuck you with your insulting BS, because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I'm ignorant. I know full well of the atrocities committed by Saddam, repeatedly, over decades, with and without our support and acceptance. You, on the other hand, claim Saddam was as bad as Hitler and Pol Pot, so I'll parrot your insult and say YOU must be ignorant of history. I repeatedly said gassing was not the only crime Saddam committed, but was obviously the worst SINGLE crime...genocides are multiple crimes over time, gassing is a single act at a single time, and the worst one he did. Understand now?
I would not accept Saddam's records to make your arguments, he was a well known insane liar.
for instance, which is it...4500 villages, or 7500 villages destroyed? Your 'information' claimed both, perhaps you should READ the information you cut and paste before deriding others for 'being ignorant of it'?
When you are forming your opinions ABOUT American policy, it makes no sense to ignore American policy.
I don't share your view about removing 'the bad man' from power because it never works. Without a reasonable, well liked, popular, intelligent government to 'take over' for the despotic leaders, and few if any zealots willing to destroy everything if they can't control it, you always end up with smaller despotic leaders fighting over the power or civil war, which has nearly always been worse (at least in the short term) than the despot. Because it never happens that the reasonable replacement government is ready before the expulsion of the despot, or that there are no zealots grasping for the power that's suddenly up for grabs, simply removing despots is usually worse than leaving them in power.
If it were done thoughtfully and thoroughly, I would support replacing them, but it's not done that way. At best, it seems the follow up is an after thought, which usually leads to disaster.

@lantern53

ah my friend.
you seem to have fallen into the propaganda trap.
allow enoch to chat with you for a bit.

are you comfy? need a drink? coffee? a beer?

ok,then let us begin

this is not a political ideology.
this is not right nor left.(seriously limiting terms anyways).

this is about the full picture.

so let us discuss WHAT propaganda actual is,rather than what we are TOLD it is.
propaganda is simply manipulated information presented in a way to appeal to our irrational and emotional response rather than our rational and reasonable.

when i use the term "manipulated" i am not inferring or implying an outright conspiracy (though often-times it may possibly be a conspiracy) but rather a set goal to illicit the desired response.

and there is always an element of truth in propaganda but the truth being presented is controlled and manipulated.which is apparent in your commentary.

corporations use this tactic and we call it mass marketing but the first usage was that of the state to control its own citizenry.america being the major and first to pioneer this tactic.see:edward bernaise and the council of propaganda (later changed to the council of public relations).

so let us break down your examples which i assume are an attempt by you to discredit the assertions in dr wasfi's speech in this video.

1.to point out the crimes against humanity is a straw man argument.
it is irrelevant.
it is a last ditch effort by the american government to excuse and/or validate an illegal war of aggression:
a.no weapons of mass destruction
b.no connection to al qaeda
c.almost 1 trillion lost (literally,they cant account for that money)

so the american government points to the atrocities of saddam hussein and says "look! look at what a bad person he is"!

SQUIRREL!

which brings us to your next point.

2.the atrocities you are referring to were well know when saddam was a paid participant by multiple government agencies.
let me say that again for you:
saddams atrocities were WELL known and was on the american government payroll.
did saddam gas the kurds?------yes
who sold him the gas components?---we did.

so when my government,in a last ditch effort to absolve its complicity in the wreckage that is iraq by pointing to the awful and horrific acts saddam perpetrated on his own people as somehow making the invasion of iraq a righteous act is utter..and complete..hypocrisy.

they KNEW what he was doing and did nothing because it was politically expedient for them to do so.they wished to corral iran and the ends justified the means.see:Zbigniew Brzezinski-the grand chessboard

there are many MANY accounts where the american government turned a blind eye to the suffering of other nation-states citizens because it did not align with our interests.

i find the whole situation morally repugnant and it angers me even further when i see the propaganda twisting my fellow countrymen into believing this is somehow a morally just way to deal with despots,tyrants,zealots.

when it was MY country who put them in power in the first place!

the rationalizations are so deeply cynical and hypocritical that it creates an almost vacuum of cognitive dissonance.

and this is my main point in regards to your commentary.
it is a rationalization given to you by those who wish to continue to oppress,dominate and control those who are powerless.

it gives a semblance of morality where there is none.

because if we took your commentary to its logical conclusion:that sometimes war is necessary to rid the world of "evil" (an arbitrary term based on perspective),then why are we not in those countries that ALSO oppress,kill,maim,torture and immiserate their citizens?

answer:because it does not serve the interests of this government.

so the only usage of emotional heart string pulling is to give americans a sense of moral superiority,while not dealing with the actual reality.

you are being manipulated my friend.
and they have given you a convenient myth to hold onto.

by my commentary i am not dismissing the great works of my country nor am i saying that my country is inherently evil.
i served my country and did my duty.

but i also will not turn a blind eye to the reality on the ground just because i find that information..uncomfortable.

many times the truth is uncomfortable and it takes courage to look at it with clear eyes and a critical mind.

i always stick to the axiom:governments lie

as for your nazi reference,
i invoke godwins law.
the death camps were not even a known reality till the war was almost over and were not the reasons for the war in the first place.
so the context is irrelevant.

as always,
eyes open...
and stay sharp.

@lantern53 keepin it frosty since 1982.stay awesome my man

Are you being pedantic for any good reason? Hyperbole can be useful. The fact is, we don't fully know the extent of atrocities committed by American Empire. As you know, history is written by the victors. What little we do know suggests we could be the worst global offenders over the last 30 years. We imprison our citizens at a higher rate than any other nation. We engage in more wars, and have clandestine involvement in still more (estimates vary, but on the high end the figures are staggering). We provide the means of oppression to brutal despots to retain trade advantages. We manipulate the global economy, potentially starving millions, just to collect on our loans. We rationalize the torture of our enemies. We treat sovereignty like a worry for lesser nations. We shred our own constitution, while suggesting it as a blueprint for others to follow. I mean... what do you want? A fucking bar chart? These aren't trading cards. You can't just flip over your ballot to look at their moral batting average.

well thank god i visited your page!
oooo../claps hands
what a delight to read your response!

i agree with almost everything you expressed.
oh thank you my friend!

economics has never been my strong suit.i know..shocker.
but i AM quite literate in history and government and of course politics.
while you are correct that a socialist state can become a fascist one,so too can a democracy.
it is really the forces of ideology which can push a state to either a fascist or swing despotic.
but i get your point.

i do apologize for my oftentimes rambling.maybe because i am a little out of my comfort zone when it comes to economics,so i rely on my history and governmental knowledge to fill in the gaps.
your last post really cleared so many misconceptions i was having during this conversation.

i knew we were more in agreement than disagreement.
and we are.

1.the banks need to held accountable.
check.
2,which by inference means the governments role should be as fraud detector and protector of the consumer.
check.
3,you didnt mention it but i hope you agree the corporate charter needs to be rewritten in a way where they are NOT a person and therefore shall be removed from the political landscape.
check.
4.this will (or should) re-balance our political system (which is diseased at the moment).
5.which will return this country to a more level playing field and equate to=more liberty.
6.this will open innovation,progress and advancements in ALL fields AND due to competitive forces ,will lower prices.

how am i doing so far?

now.
since we have to talk about politics when we talk about markets.
my old professor dr paul (great man,miss him very much).
he reduced politics down to one simple question:
"what should we do"?
or in terms that we have been discussing:
"what is governments role"?

thats it.
now people like to make it more complicated,especially people getting paid good money to postulate on sunday morning tv shows,but thats it.

being an anarchist is not one dimensional.
the anarchism YOU are speaking of is the extreme.
i am more the libertarian socialism flavor.(yes..you didnt convert me)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
the anarchist may see a form of government that no longer works.that is weighed down by its own hubris,greed and corruption.
the anarchist finds it perfectly acceptable to tear down that government to build a new one.

and why not?
if something aint working the way it was meant to,get rid of it and try another.

now you wanted to know why i feared and unrestricted free market.
(which is how i was talking your previous post and confused me greatly).i see now i may have misinterpreted your commentary so my next point may be a moot one.
if so..i apologize.

if we put everything on the table as an unrestricted free market.we would be going back to feudalism.
the flaw in capitalism is not just the boom and bust but the exploitation of the common man,or worker if you like.

not only would the most vulnerable of us be exploited but it would make the class structure even WORSE than it is now (which by comparison is not too bad when compared to,say..somolia).

we see pockets of this happening now here in the US:
http://youtu.be/GVz_yJAxVd4

imagine having to pay for any road you drove on.ALL of them.all owned by different companies and subsidiaries.every one of them a toll road.
the market would dictate what burden could be held sufficiently in order to turn a profit.
what percentage would be prevented from driving those roads due to lack of funds?

see what im saying?

lets take this template and put it with firefighters.
would having a firehouse every couple of miles be profitable?
i mean,how many fires are there actually occurring on any given day?
so the firehouse would have 2 choices that i see.
shut down the more rural and spread the firehouses more thinly OR charge a monthly fee.
since a nominal fee would be the most likely avenue,what about those people who cant afford that fee?
does the firehouse BILL them?
"sorry for the loss of your house ..pay us".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwJrPa8Ps7A

and what about police?
they already have become revenue generators and protectors of the privileged.
what happens to poor folks in an unrestricted market?
police wont have a station in any inner city areas.no profit there.
no no no..wait a minute!
there would be HUUUGE profit there!
/smacks head
what was i thinking!
of course!
just like our prison system the police would be paid by the state PER arrest.
to be reimbursed on a quarterly basis!
BRILLIANT.
then poor people could be commodities!

nope nope nope.not gonna work.
that would mean the state would have to impose a tax or something to generate the revenue to pay for the arrested subjects.

hahaha im being an asshole now.forgive me.

ok.lets talk schooling.
lets privatize em!
free market baby!
based on the local population and average income we can fill those seats.
aaaand maybe get rid of NCLB and standardized testing,which i loving refer to as the giant ball of bullshit.
now this would be GREAT.

wait a minute.
what about the poor families that cant afford the tuition?
what do they do?

well in an unrestricted market and pesky government out of the way what do YOU think is going to happen to a system driven by self interest and profit?

welcome back child labor!!
and the 80 hour work week!
and beatings for not making quota!
and how awesome is it that that poor family of 5 gets to live with grandma,grandpa,uncle lou and aunt sara and there 3 kids all in one 3 bedroom house.
its 1913 all over again.
happy days are here again.......

ok ok.dont get mad at me.that was mostly tongue in cheek.
i realize after your post tonight that you are not suggesting an "unrestricted" free market but a free market.

and i am ok with that.
if we can limit government intrusion.
allow companies to tank when they fail.
rewrite the corporate charter (or dissolve them completely,or as i suggested previously make them accountable and put back the phrase "for the public good").
reign in bank fraud and make the rules to keep em honest.

in my opinion the only thing we really seem to disagree on is when it is in regards to labor.

i tried a few years ago to buy my friends bar/eatery with most of the employees.
did you know what i found out?
we were not allowed.
could not get the permits.
the owner even offered to finance us all..
nope.
how about them apples.illegal to have an employee owned business.

that is changing though.
employee owned businesses and co-opts are popping up like recurring herpes.

i dont know why it was illegal in this area and i dont see how employee owned companies would threaten a free market.

but as you figured out.
economics is not my strong suit.

and my man,cant tell ya how grateful i am to have had this conversation with you.i learned tons,about you and your views and even some about free markets.

thank you my friend.thank you.
namaste.

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by lurgee.

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by chingalera. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Despotism-Democracy-Documentary-on-1946-or-2007

*related=http://videosift.com/video/unclassified-media-project-number-two-democracy-to-despotism

1946 Film Predicts How Our Democracy Turns Despotic has been added as a related post - related requested by enoch on that post.

unclassified media project number two-democracy to despotism has been added as a related post - related requested by enoch.

@VoodooV Like I've been saying all along, your posts are mostly attempts at intimidation. I enjoy answering some of your questions, because it helps me question my beliefs, something I think is constructive and that you seriously shouldn't be afraid of. We are all supposedly looking for the truth anyways. All this could be settled by answering my simple question, whether you'd agree or not, it wouldn't even necessarily be an argument against gun control. I was pointing out the apparent conflict between wanting people to be more responsible by taking their freedoms away, when taking their freedoms away might not contribute to making them responsible people in the long run. An unpresumptuous suggestion meant to be taken as food for thought.

Instead, you resort to being juvenile and making fun of me, while writing huge posts with my entire posts quoted afterwards as an attempt at making me turn away in horror at the sight of a huge wall of text. Sure, it takes me time to sift through all of it to see what really matters. You're trying to muscle your way through, and it's a waste of everyone's time. I actually take the time to make my posts short and to the point, did you notice that? I happen to think it's a good habit to have some consideration for the reader, why am I not surprised you have none for me?

So, instead of appreciating that I don't waste your time by making an effort at being succinct, you accuse me of avoiding some of your arguments. It's true, I avoid a few of them because I think they're irrelevant, it's called being selective. Now I know that was a bad idea. I'm terribly sorry. I won't do it anymore. I will take the time to answer the most points I can to the best of my ability, and if that my makes my posts tiresomely long and wastes my time, so be it.

I bet you're trying to flood me with words because this isn't about any truth, is it? It's about discouraging and distracting me from something. Ever heard of picking your fights? It's about being reasonable about yours and other people's times. After all, I do assume you have a life outside of this internet topic on videosift, don't you? Anyway, let's get to it:

- About emotional manipulation, you FAILED to prove it, and here's why:

When you obey traffic laws, you are being coerced if there is coercion as consequence for not obeying them. Will you get arrested? Will you get your car, which is your property, impounded if you disobey? Then yes, they are coercive laws.

When you decide not kill someone because the law will coerce you if you do, you're being coerced into not killing, even if you freely decide not to kill out of good morals and empathy for fellow human beings, the option of killing is always there in reality (you can always kill anyone if you really want to), but not legally. If you kill, you're under the threat of going to prison. The positive or negative language seems completely irrelevant, what matters is what happens when you disobey the law. If coercion ensues, the law is coercive, or, more accurately, its enforcement. I'm not actually making the distinction right now if it's a rule related to coercion itself (a rule that makes coercion more or less likely to happen), just pointing out the irrelevance of your distinction between negative and positive language.

Now, I have to admit that there is divergence when it comes to defining coercion, but there is no emotional content here as far as I can tell. I'm using it in the sense that people have a right to their life, property and freedoms, and when you take or threaten to take away any of those things (and have the power to do so), THAT is coercion. There is no emotion here, I am offended that you would think that I would resort to that, because I don't even have to. Coercion has a meaning to me, I'm just using the concept as it is. If there is an emotional content, SHOW ME what emotion that is. Up until now, you have FAILED to do so.

- About requiring things before freedoms are granted, I think you FAILED to make your point, here's why:

To type boring senseless posts on the internet, you require a keyboard. Maybe, if you could type with voice recognition, like I do, you wouldn't need a keyboard, but what matters is that you use something to type or produce characters that will be submitted to the videosift website and become a useless post. So, for the sake of argument, let's call this an "actual physical requirement".

Now, with a gun to your head, if I require that you, VoodooV, jump through actual flaming hula-hoops positioned vertically on an intricate obstacle course before typing in your videosift comments, the world would be a better place (at least videosift would). However, my requirements would be arbitrary in the sense that it imposes something not actually physically necessary to enjoy the hypothetical "freedom to post inane ramblings on videosift" (we are assuming it's a right), can you spot the difference?

So, requiring things that are not necessary to enjoy a freedom is not something that makes the freedom better or is in any way justifiable just because history is littered with the precedent of assholes like kings and despots requiring stupid things before we can enjoy freedoms that we supposedly already have. When it comes to guns, a law says we have a right to bear them. Any laws that restrict that supposed right are infringing on the freedom that comes from having that right.

- About the claim that people will be less responsible if they have less freedom:

"If I made decisions for you, I could make you act more responsibly, but that's not the same thing as making you a more responsible person."

"Over time, when we take people's freedoms away, they tend to be less responsible about the decisions we're not letting them make. There's no way they can learn about any different (good or bad) outcomes related to decisions they couldn't make, and they can't be held responsible for them either, so they can hardly become more responsible."

- About your reduction to absurdity claim that removing all the rules would make us "SUPER-Responsible":

"I don't think rules inevitably destroys our freedoms, let's make a more refined distinction:

- If a rule is meant to stop people from infringing on each other's freedoms, if it's a rule that makes people less likely to coerce each other, it's a good rule because we end up with less coercion happening (even counting the coercion necessary to enforce the rule), we end up with a more civilized society. There are not many of those kinds of rules around.

- If it's a rule that imposes some regulation because we don't trust that people will be responsible enough to do what's best for them regarding something unrelated to coercion, we not only restrict their freedom by coercion (in this case, coercion by the government), it doesn't make coercion less likely, so it's likely a bad rule."

The problem with removing all rules is that, without rules related to coercion, people would be too subjected to the threat or actual coercion from other people around them, society would be less civilized. Would that make them more responsible? That's a good question. On one side, they would have a lot more responsibilities if they had to worry about their own lives and safety every frickin' day, and all the terrible worries that comes with the unstable chaos of anarchy. However, given that they would enjoy less freedoms due to the constant coercion of others, they would likely end up being a lot less responsible, because they would have far less choices.

That's why I took the time to explain the difference between rules related to coercion and rules that just infringe on freedoms.

- About your examples of requirements before freedoms and rights are granted, here's a list of your "numerous examples" and my reply to each of them:

VoodooV: "You have the freedom to go to college..."
VoodooV: "You have the freedom to have a certain job..."

"Going to college or getting a job are not things people are entitled to (supposedly), there are no rights involved, so no freedom is being denied."

VoodooV: "You have the freedom to imbibe alcohol....IF you are a certain age and can demonstrate that you can use it safely"

I don't know about using it safely (what does that mean?), but regarding age restriction, I don't agree with those laws. I know, very "liberal" of me, but I think children are the responsibility of their parents, so it's a law that steps into parenting territory.

VoodooV: "And according to the right, you have the freedom to vote..."

About voting, I don't know, I guess being registered is a requirement for the voting process? Like the right to life requires... being alive?

"The voting process, on the other hand, seems to be something that requires registration (again, I'm not an expert on voting, so forgive me if I'm wrong), otherwise we end up just shouting to ourselves, "I vote for X"!"

VoodooV: "And having a gun, or a car, has a significant risk to infringe upon other's freedoms so it's not unreasonable to ask that you demonstrate proficiency and safety before using said items."

A driver's license is not about owning or using a car, but about driving in public venues. I could be wrong, but we don't need a license to drive a car in our own backyards, do we?

Simply owning a gun, on the other hand, not only isn't a violation of anything, it supposedly provides protection against these violations.

- About me supposedly contradicting myself, saying "there are no rules for us talking", then proposing a dare:

Did I shoot you in the face when you failed my dare? So I guess it's not the kind of rule in the sense that I didn't threaten to coerce you if you failed it. Do you understand what kind of rule I was talking about? Do you even understand what a contradiction means, or are you just taking advantage that not everyone that reads your posts knows exactly what you're referring to make yourself look smart even though you can't point out a contradiction if it rested flat in your deepest held political beliefs?

On the subject of contradictions, strictly speaking, there's no contradiction between calling you juvenile and being juvenile myself, even if I did so afterwards, and in retaliation, to give you a taste of it.

Ooooooooh... must be very embarrassing for you not to know what a contradiction stands for.

Here's your entire post quoted, because, why not?

So keeping a promise is more important than preventing war crimes; preventing the corruption of a government; upholding the freedom and morality of an entire civilisation; habeus corpus; magna carta (which is now been successfully rendered obselete in the US and many other countries); the bill of rights; and the US constitution?

More important than preventing the deaths of thousands of innocent people; allowing you to avoid an ignorant election of despots; preventing one government from unjustly interfering with the political process of another; more important than allowing a man to speak the truth?

And so I'm going to push this button; even when I have learned that it will destroy the Earth and everything on it, for I made a promise.

Go ahead and distribute all the wealth in the entire world equally among the world's populace evenly, and I guarantee that in a short time, wealth 'inequality' would exist once again. And, as in the past, the smartest and hardest working would own it all. Keep the civilized world relatively stable for 200 years, and your bar chart of wealth would again approach that which you see in this video. Yes, despots will assemble armies and steal, but more business-savvy Teslas will appear and become just as wealthy. (Jobs or Gates anyone?) The nature of humans cannot be denied.

That's interesting. In his Democracy in America Vol 2, Chapter XX "HOW AN ARISTOCRACY MAY BE CREATED BY MANUFACTURES", Baron de Tocqueville warned of these dangers (in 1840!):

In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is more
extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more
narrow-minded, and more dependent. The art advances, the arti-
san recedes. On the other hand, in proportion as it becomes more
manifest that the productions of manufactures are by so much the
cheaper and better as the manufacture is larger and the amount
of capital employed more considerable, wealthy and educated
men come forward to embark in manufactures, which were here-
tofore abandoned to poor or ignorant handicraftsmen. The mag-
nitude of the efforts required and the importance of the results to
be obtained attract them. Thus at the very time at which the sci-
ence of manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the
class of masters.

While the workman concentrates his faculties more and more
upon the study of a single detail, the master surveys an extensive
whole, and the mind of the latter is enlarged in proportion as that
of the former is narrowed. In a short time the one will require
nothing but physical strength without intelligence; the other
stands in need of science, and almost of genius, to ensure success.
This man resembles more and more the administrator of a vast
empire; that man, a brute.

The master and the workman have then here no similarity, and
their differences increase every day. They are connected only like
the two rings at the extremities of a long chain. Each of them fills
the station which is made for him, and which he does not leave;
the one is continually, closely, and necessarily dependent upon the
other and seems as much born to obey as that other is to com-
mand. What is this but aristocracy?

Then in Vol 3, Chapter VI, "WHAT SORT OF DESPOTISM DEMOCRATIC NATIONS HAVE TO FEAR" he goes on, describing a situation where a democratic nation has become
subject to a despotic government, and when the people give up and stop participating in democracy:

Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by
the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to
resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to
surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is grad-
ually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedi-
ence which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions only
exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden of it
upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people
who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to
choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this
rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it
may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties
of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually
falling below the level of humanity.

Or in other words, once you have managed to oppress the people of a democratic nation, the very equality that defines a democratic nation leaves them powerless and unable to organise together and throw off their chains.