As Tocqueville observed back in the 1830s, an equalitarian democracy is peculiarly susceptible to the temptations of taking a quick and easy road to success, and, when these expectations are frustrated, finds it easy to follow a tortuous rather than a straight and narrow path. There is a final and sobering consideration: the very government responsible for preventing violence, is, by its military solutions to problems throughout the globe and by its reliance on force instead of diplomacy, itself setting an example that is not lost on its citizens. As Justice Brandeis put it “the potent, the omnipresent teacher.... It teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker it breeds contempt for law. It invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy.”