Do the people want to be deceived? Niccolò Machiavelli -- who was, it's safe to say, something of a cynic when it came to state power -- once wrote that anyone who wishes to reform a government "must, if his measures are to be well received and carried out with general approval, preserve at least the semblance of existing methods, so as not to appear to the people to have made any change in the old order of things, although, in truth, the new ordinances differ altogether from those which they replace."
