Monday, November 09, 2009

The problem of popular democracy



"The popular idea of democracy is animated by a very strong resentment of superiority. It resents the thought of an elite; the thought that there are practical ranges of intellectual and spiritual experience, acheivement and enjoyment, which by nature are open to some and not to all. It deprecates and disallows this thought, and discourages it by every available means. As the popular idea of democracy postulates that there shall be nothing worth enjoying for anybody to enjoy that everybody may not enjoy; a contrary view is at once exposed to all the evils of a dogged, unintelligent, invincibly suspicious resentment."
~Albert Jay Nock, as quoted by T. L. Simmons in Climbing Parnassus, p.153

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