I have long held that our political system selects for those who firmly believe that the world will end if the helpless proles don't think the way the Enlightened do, and if they don't let the Enlightened run their pathetic and uninformed lives for them. This is totally bipartisan, by the way.

I firmly believe that local zoning boards, city councils, and housing associations are where these people get their first start at power. I have heard horror stories like you wouldn't believe when some miserable punk finally gets a position like this, and a chance to tell people what to do and make it stick.

In rare moments, you wonder what has happened to your neighbors. They were decent people once—you remember vaguely—they did not act like wild packs scrambling to get at one another's throats (and pockets). You do not know how many of them are wondering the same thing about you.

You know only that there was a time when the local bird watcher and the "problem-adolescent" and the poetry-club ladies and Ms. Fatso were of no danger to anyone, but now they are. Why were they better in the past? If someone answered: "Because they did not have a gun"—you would not understand it.

--Ayn Rand, "A Nation's Unity"