I was young, once, many years ago. Back then, like many of my cohort, I believed we had solutions to all the world problems and should be allowed to rule the world. But then I saw what happened as people with power didn't do the things we thought they should; I recognized the dangers of putting too much political power in the hands of what I have been referring to as "elitist interventionists".
Elitist interventionists don't much care about democracy. They simply have the hubris to "know" they are right and to think they should, by dint of their education and status, have the power to implement what they "know" is right.
One of my favourite writers, Arnold Kling says it very well here, where he uses the term "Progressives" to refer to that group I call "elitist interventionists" (I often add Ivy-League, but that ignores so many others). An excerpt [please note the sarcasm in the second paragraph]:
[T]he ones throwing the temper tantrum right now are the Progressives. They think that the 2008 election gave them the right to operate like China's autocracy, and they are lashing out hysterically at those they perceive as preventing them from doing so On the one hand, the villains are a small minority in the Senate. Or maybe the villains are the incoherent majority of the people.
The important point is that Progressives are never wrong. Top-down reform is the only way to fix the health care system. Anthropogenic global warming is scientifically proven, and its solution requires strenuous exercise of political control over individual behavior. Deficit spending is necessary and sufficient to create jobs. Technocrats can make banks too regulated to fail. Markets without technocratic control are like adolescents without adult supervision. Individual happiness can be improved by political authorities using scientific knowledge. Concentrated political power is the wave of the future, and it is good.
I am not a populist. I fear the mob. But how can I fear the Progressives any less?
Be sure to read the whole thing.