"We love the people, we just hate their government" is a phrase nearly everyone, everywhere, has heard, and yet no single phrase is more often misunderstood by its speakers.

Westerners living in democracies say this out of their utter naivete about how the world works. Deep down, most of us actually think there are no real differences between the governing class and the governed in a society. In our wide-eyed ignorance, we really do see one group as interchangeable with the other.

It simply doesn't work this way. No matter how egalitarian, no matter how totalitarian, societies are ruled by the social elite of their culture. What's important to understand about more "traditional" (i.e. theocratic, Marxist, and/or autocratic) cultures is their social elite is small, fixed, and essentially unchangeable. It is made up of at best a few dozen families who jealously and brutally guard their privilege. We are puzzled when a dictator or oligarchy runs their country into the ground because we do not understand that, to them, they are the country, and only their prosperity matters.

This deserves repeating: In most of the rest of the world, if you are not born with the right last name, go to the right school, marry the right person, and live in the right neighborhood, you do not count as a member of that society. A cynic may sneer it's no different here than there, but that only proves their ignorance. In a traditional society there is absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing, you can do to change these facts to your advantage.

Power changes hands only with violence. Without exception, throughout history, real transfers of power are marked by seas of blood sloshed out of losers at the hands of winners. Dynasty is exterminated by dynasty, empires change hands with a sword through the neck, and heretics create orthodoxy with a torch and kindling.

The theory that modern democracies are miraculous because they avoid this mayhem through law is a myth. As is so often bemoaned by Marxists and Greens in the west, the change is only one of degree, not kind. Al Gore went to Harvard, George Bush to Yale, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair to Oxford. These are most definitely not men of common stock.

Instead, the power of capitalism and democracy are that they spread out the definition of elite, make larger and far more mobile the pool of aristocracy. Faith can be twisted, naivete manipulated, but the money enshrined in capitalism has a cold, hard logic that defies long-term political or religious manipulation. Academics and liberals bleat about the failure of this country because of rights denied, opportunities stolen, all the while willfully ignoring an ugly truth: the only things really inalienable in this world are naked power and grim death. Constitutions are designed to protect, and only enable by accident. Whatever failings this country may have, its democratic constitution has over time protected it very, very well.

We succeed where all others fail not out of fairness, or the empowerment of a mythical "common man", but because our society gives anyone smart enough, mean enough, and determined enough the opportunity to become elite. Power is therefore never wrested from the smoking pyres of coincidental birth, but is instead bequeathed by one recognizable old fart to another. By breaking the chains of simple inheritance, our society reaches liberty not by allowing the plebe to influence the senator, but by allowing the plebe to become the senator.

And therein, as they say, lies the rub. Anti-war protesters in our country march in the streets against our violent involvement in the affairs of another country. In part, they do this because they assume that by attacking the ruling government we are attacking the people, because in their countries the government is the people. Never once do they seem to realize this is simply not the case. Never once do they seem to realize that violence is required to remove an entrenched elite, an elite so small and removed from the "commoners" as to be almost from another planet. Never once do they seem to realize that without such intervention, they doom the other society to a bleak existence of poverty, secret police, and wood chippers.

The reverse mistake is almost as common. The surest way to power, or the elimination of a rival power, in a traditional setting is to exterminate a small, readily identifiable minority. Simply destroying glorious landmarks in a timely way will ensure the collapse of an entire country because that's exactly what would happen in their country, if a bomb was smuggled into the right palace. Never once do they realize the ignorant masses that to them moo and baa at the master's command actually are the government they seek to destroy, and the only way to truly eliminate the threat is to kill them all.

It should therefore not be surprising that such elite labor so mightily to acquire weapons that can kill millions at the touch of a button. Nor should it be surprising (to anyone that's actually paying attention) that our government is willing to shed blood to deny them that privilege. We fear them because we think they have the support of millions. They attack us under the assumption that the death of mere thousands will give them hegemony.

Of the two, the latter is the more delusional. True, it's been proven time and again that a small, mobile, determined foe can succeed as long as their larger, more resourceful opponent screws it up. As long as they're lucky each time, they will prevail.

The problem they refuse to see is the big guy only has to be lucky once.