Abraham H. Miller writes at American Thinker:

"Democracy has failed in Georgia," said Stacey Abrams in what hardly could be called a concession speech after a ballot recount confirmed that the Republican candidate, Brian Kemp, had defeated her in Georgia's gubernatorial contest.

Of course, democracy did not fail in Georgia. The voters made their voices heard at the ballot box, and Ms. Abrams did not like what she heard.

The late Israeli historian J.L. Talmon called such behavior "totalitarian democracy" or "messianic democracy," which found its origins in the French Revolution when the extremists arrogated to themselves the unfettered right to interpret the will of the people.

"Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about this when he observed that those who made the French Revolution always spoke in the name of the people, without in the least having bothered to consult them," Miller explains.

"Talmon's theme was that in totalitarian democracy there exists a general will, an abstraction that is known to elites who divine what the people really want and assume the right to speak in the name of the people," Miller continues.

"In totalitarian democracy, the elite are not the people's representatives but their messiahs," Miller states.

"Abrams stands squarely in the long pantheon of those who claimed not only to understand the will of the people but also to embody it. This pantheon," Miller notes, "includes the French Revolution's Robespierre, Italy's Benito Mussolini, Argentina’s Juan Peron, and Lenin, among others.

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