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Entry: Egalitarian, Totalitarian, Socratic? Link: http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/egalitarian_totalitarian_socratic#27457 Post contents: Richard, that is a very good and pertinent question. I would say that, yes, broadly construed, "egalitarianism" has historically been a healthy noble fiction. Though I would give it a different name, something along the lines of the official bootstrap moralism of the American founding--call it bootstrapism--which in conjunction with traditional structures and mores (which carried with them embedded generational memory, virtue, order, care, and skill) created a largely free republic of "equal" men and harnessed the vitality of males in service to the life of the spirit and to women and children (which are at the heart of any successful civilization). This fiction is erroding badly due to a corrupt and foolish elite squandering this capital in the stew of intesifying pluralism, resource scarcity, and generalized sins of the fathers being visited on the children to the tenth generation. Sent at: 2009 01 09