Posted on 04/08/2002 2:55:48 PM PDT by cd jones
AROUND 1830, a group of French artists and intellectuals looked around and noticed that people who were their spiritual inferiors were running the world. Suddenly a large crowd of merchants, managers, and traders were making lots of money, living in the big houses, and holding the key posts. They had none of the high style of the aristocracy, or even the earthy integrity of the peasants. Instead, they were gross. They were vulgar materialists, shallow conformists, and self-absorbed philistines, who half the time failed even to acknowledge their moral and spiritual inferiority to the artists and intellectuals. What's more, it was their very mediocrity that accounted for their success. Through some screw-up in the great scheme of the universe, their narrow-minded greed had brought them vast wealth, unstoppable power, and growing social prestige.
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Here are three screen names. Maybe a poll would be in order, for which of the three is more desirable, more disgusting, or whatever...
Funny, sounds like Hollywood's, Brooks' and Kristol's opinion of Bush.
Because if the tide of conflict is rising, then we had better be able to articulate, not least to ourselves, who we are, why we arouse such passions, and why we are absolutely right to defend ourselves.
We've had years of an educational system, particularly at the university level, that has chipped away at our understanding of ourselves and basically done nothing but spew this warmed-over bourgeoisophobia. Part of the reason, I suspect, is that we members of the bourgeoisie are too busy - well, making money, achieving things, etc. -to have time to crank out manifestos. Now if only we could turn manifestos into a profit-center...
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