A Republic simply flourishes without a pecking order, a social rank. If the President is merely "Mr. President," as that low-brow radical Washington started off the tradition with, and if public servants are, well, public servants, then the Republic is in good stead.
I offer the following from correspondence. The following is in response to an opinion piece on the evils of Socialized Medicine.
You offer a powerful MORAL article about socialism. Consider also the one that makes it more attractive to Americans - the esthetic argument.
We propose to give to the beautiful, by means of theft from the ugly. America is a celebrity-based society, and we worship the beautiful people. This even extends to beautiful things, such as the polar bear, which is in danger of extinction, and the dolphin and the tiger - all aesthetically-selected creatures, not the horsetail and whipworm and sea cucumber, which may well be in the same danger, but are ugly-ass suckers.
The sixteen-hour operation to separate the Siamese Twins, that's one of the greatest mediamedicine shows, costing - somebody? - hundreds of thousands of dollars. If we pool our money, we can pay for these blockbuster shows, at the expense of the rural Alabama kid with Down's Syndrome, and HER need for surgery on an annular pancreas.
The paradox of Socialism is that the "somebody" who pays for it, is usually the powerless. Not the Park Avenue tobacco heiress in her endangered-species furs; no, that's the bait. The switch is to the "citizen." Socialism depends on there being a lowest-rank called "citizen." It's society's loser. In the Soviet Union, you were called "citizen" when you were convicted of a felony - no more "comrade" for you!
It means the sacrifice for the Visible by the Invisible, the Named by the Nameless, the Party Member by the prole. The nobility, in what ever form that society creates it, has a RIGHT to be free of need; and it is the prole who fills that need. Some folks like Jefferson and Madison found that sort of thinking revolting - literally.
And it is always uncouth and Philistine to say - screw the famous! F-off and die, you powerful! Why is it my duty, to care for the rich and famous - why is Katie Couric's brother or Oprah's postman's son more important than my alcoholic brother who lives in the trailer, whom I support?
That's an aesthetic approach to socialism.
All we ever do is change the measure of ranking. Gay men who smoke, in San Francisco, have not changed in their social loathesomness from 1950 to today. Think of that!
We are always proud of our "changes in tolerance," i.e. our shifting of the social order. But few even question the fundamentals of social order itself.
But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Thomas Jefferson
I can never pass by Jefferson with simply one quote. We now live in tyranny, the Golem our own creation; with the blame upon our selves, and no excuse that we are unwarned.
- I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
- If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.
- Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
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