Our society consists of a number of diverse individuals striving to live together. Because of our diversity we know, by philosophy and by experience, that there is no such thing as a general will of society, except insofar as the diverse individual ‘wills’ agree in desiring certain material things (think: food, shelter and clothing). Perhaps it is also true that each diverse ‘will’ desires ‘happiness’ and ‘goodness’ – however, their conceptions of these abstractions often conflict with each other.
Ideally, ‘government’ is the means by which all the diverse individual wills are assured complete freedom of moral choice and at the same time ‘government’ strives to keep these diverse ‘wills’ from violently clashing. As we know, this ‘ideal government’ does not and could not ever exist. The ‘ideal government’ presupposes that every diverse individual in the society possesses equal power, and also that every individual takes an active part in government. As we well know, in our society, neither of these ‘ideals’ exists; at minimum, the very size and complexity of our government makes this ‘ideal’ impossible.
What we do know in our society – perhaps in all modern, complex societies – is that the majority is always ruled by a minority. A certain number of individuals decide what a law should be. They command enough authority/force to see that the majority obeys them. In order to do this, the minority must, among other things, command a varying degree of consent by the majority (though this consent need not be and never is complete). The minority must, for example, have the consent of the armed forces and the police, and they must either control the financial resources of society, or have the support of those who do (think of all the money that is spent when it comes to electing our government representatives).
Our government – a Democracy – assumes the right of every diverse individual to revolt against our government by voting. Sadly, this has not been as effective as our Founding Fathers hoped because they failed to realize/understand the pressure that the more powerful and better educated classes could bring to bear upon the less powerful and less educated (an inequality that we are confronted with today). Our Founding Fathers did not understand or they ignored the fact that in an economically unequal society votes may be equal but voters are not. They did not understand or they ignored the fact that the ‘powerless’ – or apathetic – would not vote or would be blocked from voting (think: voter suppression laws).
Our Founding Fathers did know and understand that a democracy needed its citizens to be educated/knowledgeable and that each citizen of voting age, via education and emotional ownership (think: ‘we the people’ are the government) will, at minimum, choose to vote. Today, perhaps more than ever before, our citizens are not educated well enough and have not embraced ‘emotional ownership’ and so a minority of voters decides for all of us. To complicate matters, our two main political parties have moved more and more to the extremes (right and left) and so candidates appeal to their ‘bases’ and strive to win over enough of the moderate majority or the ‘fringe folks’ in order to win (and they do win because less than 50% of registered voters choose to vote).
As a society we have been on this path for almost thirty years and it appears that we are going to continue to choose this path. Where is this path taking us? Do we care? Do we want to know?
Searcher-Seeker 
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