Our distorted ideas of rights and liberty and equality have been mixed up with our false conception of the state, with the monstrous fallacy of man _vs._ the state. But as we now see that the individual and society are different aspects of the same process, so we see that the citizen and the state are one, that their interests are identical, that their aims are identical, that they are absolutely bound up together. Our old political dualism is now disappearing. The state does not exist for the individual or the individual for the state: we do not exalt the state and subordinate the individual or, on the other hand, apotheosize the individual and give him the state as his “servant.” _The state is not the servant of the people._ The state must _be_ the people before it can reach a high degree of effective accomplishment. The state is one of the collective aspects of the individual; the individual is from one point of view the distributive aspect of the state. The non-existence of self-sufficing individuals gives us the whole of our new theory of democracy. Those who govern and those who are governed are merely two aspects of the common will. When we have a state truly representative of our collective citizenship, then the fear of the state will disappear because the antithesis between the individual and the state will have disappeared. To sum up: our present idea of the state is that it is not something outside ourselves, that it must flow out from ourselves and control our social life. But it must “control” our life by expressing it. The state is always the great Yes, not the great No. Liberty and restraint are not opposed, because ideally the expression of the social will in restraint _is_ our freedom. The state has a higher function than either restraining individuals or protecting individuals. It is to have a great forward policy which shall follow the collective will of the people, a collective will which embodied through our state, in our life, shall be the basis of a progress yet undreamed of. When we can give up the notion of individual rights, we shall have taken the longest step forward in our political development. When we can give up the idea of national rights—but it is too soon to talk of that yet. ----- Footnote 63: See ch. XXIX for the theory of “objective rights” now held by many as the basis of the new state. Footnote 64: This is a hoary quarrel. From the beginning of our government it was seen that the equal rights doctrine was a sword which could cut both ways. Both Federalists and Republicans believed in equal rights: the Federalists, therefore, wanted to protect individuals with a strong government; the Republicans wanted a weak government so that individuals could be let alone in the exercise of their equal rights. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XVII DEMOCRACY NOT THE MAJORITY: OUR POLITICAL FALLACY