Our Servants, Our Masters: How Control Masquerades as Assistance

The concept of hierarchy is so natural that it worms its way into virtually every aspect of life. Most of us have to submit to a boss at work; some of us have employees who have to submit to us. Parents rule the household while children, in theory anyway, have to do as they are told.

When hierarchies go awry is when we fail to recognize them for what they are. A servant who thinks he is master is in for a rude awakening indeed. There is a certain class of hierarchy that exists in modern America, in which the servant-master relationship has been turned on its head, and like something out of Alice in Wonderland, has confused the great majority of the public about what is really going on. The root of the problem can be found in the term “public servant.”

In Our Servants, Our Masters, Logan Albright asks readers to reexamine their preconceptions of the world based on the language we use, and consider the fact that Members of Congress, among other so-called public servants, don’t “work for us” as is commonly asserted, but actually have the power to dictate to a large extent how we live our lives.