Emma Goldman comments on this same paradox by saying, "It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony." (Love, p. 96) Why then did these individuals from England come to the New World after being oppressed, and change the rules to benefit themselves, but still alienate the individual? It can only be because they understood the oppressive power that government holds over its people. By setting the rules in opposition to themselves, they were able to keep the power in their hip pocket, while propagating the lie that the people, through the structure of democracy, held the power.

             Both Proudhon and Goldman, through these ideas, are stressing the importance of the individual, an idea that has long been lost in our capitalistic society. Even though we are told to forage ahead and look for the individual American dream, we end up bowing to our secret master, the United States' government. In a government that is supposedly for the people and by the people, how is it possible for so many of the concerns of the people remain unaddressed? Instead, the individual ends up spending most of their energy taking care of the masses. Goldman says, "Order derived through submission and maintained by terror is not much of a safe guarantee; yet that is the only 'order' that governments have ever maintained." .

             Henry David Thoreau suggests that people in this situation need to let themselves be a counter friction to stop the machine. (Love, p. 103) He suggests that we take active participation in changing our situation, not by violent action, but through actions such as not paying your taxes, refusing the draft or choosing not to vote. By protesting in this way, we are internally chipping away at the infrastructure that denies us our individual freedom. The government acts like a parasite that lives inside its host and feeds off of it, but does not kill it.