Isn’t your philosophy authoritarian?
Accusations of authoritarianism follows from an equalitarian ideology which assumes the equality of all men so that no man is worth listening to more than another, no idea is more valuable than another, no child wiser than its parents, no code higher or more authoritative than another.
But it happens that in the course of human history much has occurred and much has been learned which constitutes a fund of experience we disregard at our peril. All of us are not as wise as our ancestors. We can become wiser only by listening to their experience before going on to add our own, just as a child must first listen to his parents before he can safely lead a life of his own.
What is more serious, the destruction by the equalitarian virus of this proper and necessary kind of authority also destroys proper and necessary discipline. Lack of it in the home is, in my opinion, far more often the cause of juvenile delinquency among both rich and poor than the so-called exclusion from family or community groups which today obsesses psychiatrists and sociologists.
Perhaps an ideology which offers ice cream to soothe mutinous convicts, and which condones murder and robbery among backward peoples under the guise of “freedom,” should not be expected to create respect for duly constituted authority in the home. Yet all children, and especially delinquents, need to be taught respect for and obedience to parental authority if we are ever to have law and order in the adult world.
Interestingly enough, the delinquent who is capable of being saved wants the voice of authority to rebuke and guide him more than he wants pity and tears. Parents are usually to blame both in failing to set an example that can be respected and in failing to speak with the tone of command. Men or nations that have been told often enough that in spite of all their training, experience and wisdom they are no better than the untrained, inexperienced and ignorant child or race will come in time to believe it, and consequently to lose the force and assurance which generates obedience.
Finally, by a series of insidious steps the equalitarian virus produces that most disastrous of all diseases, the complete appeasement of evil. At some point, all ability to discriminate is lost, all resistance to wrong ceases, all indignation dies, all evil is met with sobbing pleas which evil most naturally greets with contemptuous laughter, and the red death of a Godless communism settles on the earth.
I cannot protest too strongly against the tendency of the equalitarian virus to undermine all authority in our society from the home through the school on into our attitude toward international affairs.
Carleton Putnam
“At some point, all ability to discriminate is lost, all resistance to wrong ceases, all indignation dies, all evil is met with sobbing pleas which evil most naturally greets with contemptuous laughter, and the red death of a Godless communism settles on the earth.”
We could say that in this fallen world, “all things naturally tend towards equality” – the equality of dead level. All that it requires to triumph is for us to do nothing, so to speak.
Thus we might say that even though ambitious sinners, persons with exceptional talents, may well be anti-egalitarian, the LAZY sinners, average slothful slobs without strong urge for something greater, are like natural egalitarians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer#Evolution
“However, as Bertrand Russell stated in a letter to Beatrice Webb in 1923, this formulation has problems: ‘I don’t know whether [Spencer] was ever made to realise the implications of the second law of thermodynamics; if so, he may well be upset. The law says that everything tends to uniformity and a dead level, diminishing (not increasing) heterogeneity’.[16]”