[Melas]

Most great self respecting artists will realize their own greatness and, therefore, they don't buy into the radical egalitarianism that's demanded by the Left... not that they don't have a social conscience. I don't know how you can mention any of these names, especially Oscar Wilde, who perhaps had the greatest sense of his own extraordinary talents and, therefore, deserved social inequality. Artists have always realized that they are not equal to the masses... at least the honest ones. They may have hated the Bourgeois for being a crass philistine which is different from Marx hating the bourgeois for economic and social reasons. Neo Marxists have done wonders to co-opt and confabulate the two aspects of being Bourgeois... they also co-opted and distorted the views of perhaps the greatest Continental right wing thinker, Nietzsche, for their own use.

Thinking that you're better than everyone else has little if anything to do with be on the right, or conservatism in general. As a matter of fact, the complete opposite is true. Radical egalitarianism is born from those feelings of superiority, not a misguided sense of equality. It's the very basis of the philsophy of Noblesse Oblige which was is the intellectual birthplace of much of liberalism.

[Blind Eye Jones]

The intellectual birthplace of Liberalism in Europe began with Bacon, Hobbs and Locke and flowered into a mostly French Enlightenment on the continent. The aristocracy and the church held the reins of power... in other words, no self evident, universal, inalienable rights of man, just slavery and servitude if you were a commoner... just the crushing weight of great Chain of Being.

"Radical egalitarianism is born from those feelings of superiority..."

You're right. Liberals are such hypocrites!