Saturday, April 01, 2006
Oriana Fallaci: Democracy and equality
Those who have no courage always recur to equality. Never to freedom. Indeed Tocqueville was right when he said that the marriage on which democracy is based, the marriage between Equality and Freedom, has not succeeded. And it has not succeeded because we can be equal also in slavery. And they love it much less because, flowing into collectivism, equality relieves the individual from the burden of responsibility. Because equality does not demand the sacrifice that freedom demands, does not require the courage that freedom requires. In short, it does not need freedom. Indeed Tocqueville is right also when he says that in democracy the term Equality means the legal equality expressed by the motto "All men are equal before the Law." Not a mental and moral equality. Not an equality of value and intelligence and guts. Finally, he is right when he says that in democracy votes are counted not weighed. Which is the reason why, in democracy, quantity ends up with being more valuable than quality. And why the unintelligent or the less intelligent always end up with ruling the others.
pp. 258-259
1 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Apr 02, 02:11:00 PM:
If everyone votes, the people of above and below average intelligence will get roughly equal numbers of votes. (The bell curve may be slightly skewed, but not much, I think.) However, it seems likely that people of above average intelligence are more likely to vote. That especially applies to the highest and lowest 10%.
