From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   Scott Lasch wrote a book called "The Revolt Of The Elites." What he did not   
   tell you is that America owes its nationhood to one. America's founders such   
   as Thomas Jefferson came from the aristocracy, and they created America's   
   statehood. The ideas for    
   America's democracy came from English and French aristocratic intellectuals   
   such as Locke and Voltaire. And without these elitist intellectual, an average   
   American would be tilling a 2-acre plot of land, living till age 30 and having   
   his sons drafted    
   into the military and his daughters into domestic servitude.   
      
   What would happen if Thomas Jefferson came to America today? Most likely he   
   would be regarded as an elitist and a snob. Even more likely he would be   
   regarded as dangerous, even narcissistic or psychopathic. Most certainly   
   people would think that he is    
   arrogant or "thinks he's better than everyone else." And then of course there   
   would be any number of others who think that he does not live in the real   
   world.   
      
   Anyone from any kind of background can be bad to someone from another   
   background. People from higher born groups can be bad to people from lower   
   born groups; but the opposite can happen as well. I knew a woman who came from   
   English royalty, who married a    
   man from a bad background. He made her spend 6 hours a day cleaning the house   
   and would come at her with fists whenever he found a speck of dust on the   
   floor. To him, she was a trophy wife. To her, he was a complete tyrant - one   
   who did not come from any    
   kind of aristocracy and who behaved in a much more tyrannical manner than most   
   men who are high-born.   
      
   Now there are any number of people who want equality; but equality can mean   
   any number of different things. If a woman wants equality with men, then that   
   means that she will have to deal with what men deal with - competition,   
   violence, war. With racial    
   equality, there are also demands on the person; white people demand a lot of   
   one another as well. But these are not the things that I want to talk about   
   the most. I seek to talk about this: Culture.   
      
   Probably the worst feature of America is its lack of respect for culture and   
   the arts. At one or another point some people decided that there is some kind   
   of incompatibility between culture and equality. This is wrong - totally   
   wrong. One does not need    
   to be an aristocrat to value culture or to produce culture. I have seen   
   excellent work produced by people from lower-income backgrounds, both black   
   and white; and it is wrong to see culture as something that is a luxury of the   
   elites.   
      
   In France, culture is something that is held in high esteem, and not only by   
   the highly educated. Even the manual workers there have use for the arts and   
   the thought. There is absolutely no reason why America should not do the same   
   either. American    
   people are just as talented and intelligent as French people. The only problem   
   is their attitudes.   
      
   What are these attitudes? One, once again, is seeing art and thought as   
   luxuries of elites. They are no such thing. Without them damn snob   
   intellectuals such as Thomas Jefferson, America would not exist. As for   
   prosperity, it also owes vastly to    
   intellectuals, particularly Adam Smith who articulated the philosophy of   
   capitalism and economists such as Milton Friedman who brought it back when   
   much of the world embraced socialism. There has been magnificent architecture   
   in America, and there has    
   been beautiful machinery built in America. Art and culture can exist anywhere   
   and regardless of background, and it is wrong that a nation of 300 million   
   people with per capita GDP of $50,000 a year should not have art comparable to   
   that of Renaissance    
   Italy.   
      
   Another is a stance of denigration of beauty. This has been especially strong   
   in feminism. A belief that some people appear to have is that beauty is   
   incompatible with being a good person. This is a terrible belief. There is no   
   reason whatsoever to see    
   there being any kind of relationship - good or bad - between being beautiful   
   and being a good person. Some people will be both; some will be one or the   
   other; and some will be neither. The idea that there is something incompatible   
   between such things is    
   nothing but a license for women who are neither to abuse women who are either   
   or both. And in the real world, it translates into there being no demand for   
   beauty, to result in very little beauty being created in the country.   
      
   Another thing that adds to reduction in beauty in the country is the trends in   
   academic art. Postmodernism and avant garde poetry are absolute abominations.   
   There is no beauty to them whatsoever; indeed they are against beauty. When   
   Jewel wrote a poetry    
   book, the media establishment maligned her terribly, when her poetry in fact   
   was far better than anything that they publish. Having written poetry in   
   classical and romantic styles on Internet forums - and having been viciously   
   attacked for it by people    
   claiming academic associations - I know just what faces someone who actually   
   strives to produce beautiful work and how hard it is to get it to people who   
   would derive benefit from reading it.   
      
   Most certainly Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin would have taken objection to   
   the anti-artistic stance. They would have corrected their followers, telling   
   them that equality is not the same thing as sameness. They would have told   
   their followers that    
   accomplishment is a good thing, and that also means artistic accomplishment.   
      
   They also would have taken objection to the stance that calls people dangerous   
   for thinking differently from those around them. They would have said that   
   freedom means freedom, and that means first of all: In thought. They would   
   have said that just about    
   everything to which the world owes what it has started in original thought;   
   and original thought is something that starts in original minds - the very   
   minds that the recent trends have been trying to portray as dangerous.   
      
   So now America has a president whom psychology describes as a narcissist, and   
   who is a self-made billionaire with excellent taste. Maybe it could be   
   possible to work in such a climate to build a culture. Maybe it could be   
   possible to confront the    
   academic abominations. Maybe it will be possible to make America beautiful   
   again. And maybe - just maybe - it will be possible for there to be a demand   
   for beauty, to result in those who are capable of producing beauty doing so -   
   and those who seek such    
   a thing having in their lives the beauty that they seek.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)