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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: they might eventually produce the evil they seek to avoid, and a
time might come when the inordinate passions of a few men, aided
by the unintelligent selfishness or the pusillanimity of the
greater number, would ultimately compel society to pass through
strange vicissitudes. In democratic communities revolutions are
seldom desired except by a minority; but a minority may sometimes
effect them. I do not assert that democratic nations are secure
from revolutions; I merely say that the state of society in those
nations does not lead to revolutions, but rather wards them off.
A democratic people left to itself will not easily embark in
great hazards; it is only led to revolutions unawares; it may
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