It is somewhat ironic that this question be posed in a forum such as 'Helium'. To the best of my knowledge, the vast majority of those who read and write for Helium, wherever we may be in the world, are part of representative democracy in which we elect our politicians, and by extraction our governments, by a system of universal suffrage.

Under such a system, policy may be laid out by a political party hopeful of success. That policy will be accepted or rejected by voters at the ballot booths. By any normal measure of sanity, a political party whose policies included the manipulation of popular behaviour would be rejected out of hand without a second thought. A sound argument? On the face of it, maybe. But how does that explain the rise of Hitler's Third Reich?

While it may seem incredible to people in the twenty first century, Hitler and his National Socialist Party (NAZIS) were elected fairly and squarely by the people of Germany by a system of universal suffrage. The aftermath of that dreadful election, subsequent world war and Holocaust, forms the basis of our recent history, from which we would all hope to have learned important lessons about manipulative and repressive government.

Certain behaviour, of course, should be suppressed. That is why we have laws protecting children from exploitation by sexual predators. That is why theft is against the law. But all of life is not black and white, and the many shades of grey present us with our political dilemmas. The truth is that whether we like it or not, our governments will always do their cunning best to manipulate the behaviour of citizens.

Bring the public round to your way of thinking and government becomes a whole lot easier. Do you suppose, for example, that the whole population of Great Britain is against capital punishment? Or that the whole population of the USA is in favour? Of course neither premise is correct. Yet for many years it has been accepted by voters that it will continue in (most states of) America and continue to be banned in Great Britain. The issue no longer needs to be part of partisan policy making because successive governments of both Left and Right have persuaded us that it should stay or that it should stay gone.

No doubt we can all think of repressive regimes where citizens are subjugated and have little or no rights at all. Consider for example the treatment of students in Tiananmen Square, the recent electoral fiasco in Iran, the slaughter of countless innocent women and children in Sri Lanka.

In the West, and in particular in the United States and Great Britain, we have been persuaded over many years that we have to take a stand either to the Right or to the Left of politics and to accept a whole raft of policies associated with one or the other position. The term 'liberal' has become dirtied and disparaged by politicians on either side of the fence. Yet it is only a truly liberal stance which will prevent governments from continually trying to manipulate the personal behaviour of citizens.

Learn more about this author, Colin Morley.
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