Posted by
JDComments on Thursday, January 04, 2007 2:28:56 PM
Conservatism was born of fear of the masses dominating the government through democracy. The thought of the predominantly poor, recently impotent mob coming to power sent chills through the property owners and aristocracy, who foresaw a world where the lowest common denominator would become the norm, and civilized society discarded in favor of retribution and plundering.
In the US, that bastion of liberal values, suffrage dependent on property ownership, the Electoral college and an independent judiciary were all attempts to prevent the have-nots from running riot and destroying the civic body.
Even in revolutionary France, ground zero for the whole concept of "equality", the masses were regarded suspiciously, and Napoleon, who either was the downfall or fruition of the Revolution depending on your viewpoint, never got over his fear of the crowds he witnessed running amok while overseeing security in Paris in the mid 1790's.
The US, unlike Europe, never having had a serf class, has been able to elevate its population to middle class status through capitalism at a tremendously quick pace, and so the economic fears of democracy have been alleviated to a great degree. This explains the Liberals need to create other "victims" to elevate, such as minorities, gays and feminists. Without victims, Liberalism is bereft of meaning.
However, there are areas where the "race to the bottom" continues, and in the cultural arena especially the lowest common denominator still reigns.
A particularly frightening example of this is occurring in Fairfax , VA where the libraries are using popularity to determine which books to discard [see
article ], and thus many classics are being removed in favor of top ten best sellers, with the rationalization that space is limited.
Now any civilization builds on its history, and the accumulation of knowledge is what causes a society to progress. Indeed, the mechanisms of data storage and transmission are the "genes" of a culture, those things which literally determine how the "body" will develop.
Nothing has served this purpose better than books. Yes, I can hear those out there making the argument that computers are going to replace them, and that may be so, but it is not true yet.
Right now books are still the best, most
egalitarian means for knowledge to be transferred to our children, and that is what makes what is happening in Fairfax so frightening. We are depriving the next generation of the experiences and wisdom encompassed in the classics, and we will all be the poorer for it.
The race to the bottom is not over, and if we are lucky we can stop it . The irony is that if we can't, whoever wins it will be the loser.