Democracy cannot work if neither the electorate nor the elected can be trusted to act in the best interests of the whole, rather than of themselves individually.
So, if there is to be a perception of democracy, “fear” ought not be an issue, on one side nor the other. When a fear is perceived, your democracy has failed.
Fear, as you have no doubt noticed, is a very easy mindset to cultivate.
I think we are having a failure to communicate. You think I am talking about a small group of insurgents holding a coup. I’m not. The “mob” is the voting population.
You keep saying “the people as a whole.” What does that even mean? The “people as a whole” can barely agree on the time of day, much less what should or should not be the proper role of government. Go read some of the examples that I mentioned. When “the people as a whole” make dumb shit decisions and decapitate their own leadership over any perceived failure or disagreement, it results in paralyzing the system of government to the point that governance is ineffective.
Yes, we do accomplish this… every few years. The Athenians wanted the government to be afraid of the people, so they held elections annually and had great power to recall, expel, or even execute anyone that displeased them for practically any stupid reason. This led to chaos. This is part of the reason that we have things like a four-year presidential term and a lifelong Supreme Court. We recognize, for example, that the Supreme Court Justices should be able to make their decisions purely on the basis of law and reason, and not because they are afraid of being fired or voted out of office. Likewise, if the President makes an unpopular decision he is still protected from losing his job for at least a few years.
+1 to this. OP is extremely vague and it is causing confusion. Some responses here are interpreting “fear” to mean that the people should violently attack their government, and some are interpreting it to mean that an official can be voted out in the next election. There’s a huuuuge amount of gray between those two extremes.
I’m also going to criticize the juvenile nature of the government/people dichotomy. The dominant narrative in most anti-government screeds is that the “government” is this monolithic and alien entity that comes from outside the country and imposes itself on “the people.” In real life, the government is composed of the people. Where do you draw the line? Is the little old lady that works at the Post Office “government” or is she “people?” Is she in danger of being murdered if the “government” does something the “people” don’t like? How high does a civil servant have to rise in the hierarchy before they are “one of* them*?”
The people that support this kind of comic-book fantasy world have this idea of the “government” being something like the evil Empire in Star Wars. When they talk about “the government” they imagine the capitol building in Washington and maybe the police and the IRS, or whatever other agency they have a beef with. They don’t acknowledge that in real life the “government” is composed of literally millions of people with varying degrees of responsibility who make sure they have clean water, safe roads, and buildings that don’t fall over.
I’d suggest that these kinds of people should take a look at what happened in Baathist Iraq. They got rid of the entire “government,” which meant kicking out not just the dictators and the tyrants but also the minor functionaries and the municipal workers. They blacklisted all of the people who knew how to operate the water systems, the city electrical grids, and the garbage collectors. And it turns out that no matter how much you hate the police, when you fire everyone down to Barney goddamned Fife the Mayberry deputy, it throws everything into chaos.
Pretty sure that was disproved about 120 years earlier, in 1649.
That’s nonsense. If all of the people are unhappy because the government failed to serve them then the government should be afraid, and hopefully the people will revolt for their own benefit. That has nothing to do with government fearing dissatisfaction due to factors beyond their control any more than fearing the dissatisfaction of a single citizen.
You produced two examples, one from 406 BC and one from 1789. That hardly indicates that mob action is an ongoing danger. In general, the people act with more restraint.
Valid point, but people have a kind of “figurehead” reasoning – synecdoche? – where, yeah, Parliament is the problem, but they still shake their fist at The King. It’s a little like blaming Obama for the ACA: Congress passed it, not the President…
Certainly the existence of Parliaments in the first place is an outbreak of “fear the people” reasoning. Kings were too damned powerful, until the Barons rose up and put some limits on them.
(Divided government is, quite possibly, the single best thing humanity has ever invented in 8,000 years of civilization. Second best is sanitary sewage disposal.)
Especially if they have the tools right at hand needed to do the lashing out with. Which by nature governments always do have.
I said, “ALL of the people will be unhappy at some time or another.” As in, you can’t please everyone all the time. As soon as a government makes a choice, someone won’t like it. And given the nature of democracies, eventually everyone will disagree with som4e decision or other.