The large majority – me included – wants to be passive and rely on an
efficient state apparatus to guarantee the smooth running of the entire
social edifice, so that I can pursue my work in peace. Walter Lippmann
wrote in his Public Opinion (1922) that the herd of citizens must be
governed by “a specialised class whose interests reach beyond the
locality" – this elite class is to act as a machinery of knowledge that
circumvents the primary defect of democracy, the impossible ideal of the
"omni-competent citizen". This is how our democracies function – with our consent:
there is no mystery in what Lippmann was saying, it is an obvious fact; the mystery
is that, knowing it, we play the game. We act as if we are free and freely deciding,
silently not only accepting but even demanding that an invisible injunction
(inscribed into the very form of our free speech) tells us what to do and think.
“People know what they want” – no, they don’t, and they don’t want to know it.
They need a good elite, which is why a proper politician does not only advocate people’s interests,
it is through him that they discover what they “really want.”

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2013/04/simple-courage-decision-leftist-tribute-thatcher