Tolkien and Western Government

[Kuruharan]

That's a fascinating observation, for as I recall seeing both Washington's Mount Vernon and Jefferson's Monticello, they both struck me as a very medieval form of organisation rather than a model for democratic organisation, despite all the statements of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

It is not really so hard to understand when one reflects that the system they designed could be interpreted as being intended to create a situation where every citizen could be something of a king on their own ground. In the public sphere they were citizens, in their private they were masters of their own domain.

To a certain extent, I think this might have been an idea with which Tolkien could have sympathized.