From Vol 2, Chapter 1:Right now, no one accuses anyone of demogoguery. The world of the day is "populism". At this writing, there are two presidential candidates, one from each party, whose platforms are consistently designated as "populist".
Like "pornography", populism a word we are all supposed to understand without defining. But I will define it: Essentially, populism is a rally for the "little guy" against other citizens who are rich and are powerful (because they are rich). It is never necessary to prove that any particular person is harmed by these rich citizens. Their existence is a self-evident affront to the others, and it is assumed that they must pay some fine (tax, fee, or debilitation) to make up for their wrong.
A distinction is useful here. Since 1992 and before, political conservatives in America have condemned the worldview of political liberals as "elitist". Yet, Vice President Dan Quayle was never called a "populist". So, a diatribe against elitism is not necessarily populist.
- James
"The charms of equality are every instant felt and are within the reach of all; the noblest hearts are not insensible to them, and the most vulgar souls exult in them."
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"The first and most intense passion that is produced by equality of condition is, I need hardly say, the love of that equality....It has been said a hundred times that our contemporaries are far more ardently and tenaciously attached to equality than to freedom...The taste which men have for liberty and that which they feel for equality are, in fact, two different things; and I am not afraid to add that among democratic nations they are two unequal things."
[...]
"I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for liberty. Left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. However, for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, INVINCIBLE; they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot have that, they will have equality in slavery. People will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism, but they will not endure [someone better off than themselves]...All men and all powers seeking to cope with this irresistible passion will be overthrown and destroyed by it. "
[...]
"Men cannot enjoy political liberty unpurchased by some sacrifices, and they never obtain it without great exertions. But the pleasures of equality are self-proffered; each of the petty incidents of life seems to occasion them, and in order to taste them, nothing is required but to live. "
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"...Men will pounce upon equality ravenously, and they will cling to it as to some precious treasure which they fear to lose. The passion for equality penetrates on every side into men's hearts, expands there, and fills them entirely. Do not bother telling them that by blindly surrendering themselves to a single, exclusive passion they risk their dearest self-interests; they will be deaf. Do not bother showing them how their liberty is escaping from their grasp while they are looking another way; they are blind to it, or rather they can recognize only equality as the sole object of value in the universe. "
[...]
"It is obvious, even to narrow and unthinking minds, that political liberty (in its excesses) can undermine the tranquillity, the property, and the lives of individual citizens. On the contrary, no one except attentive and clear-sighted men will recognize the dangers threatened by the attempt to acheive total equality. And, quite often, those people will avoid pointing them out. "
[...]
"The evils produced by an extremist policy of equality are only gradually revealed; they creep, little-by-little, into the social frame. Only from time-to-time are they totally apparent, and by the time the evils are fully realized, habit has already caused them to be no longer felt.
"The advantages that liberty brings are shown only after some time, and it is always easy to mistake the cause from which they originated. The advantages of equality are immediate, and they can always be traced to their source...Political liberty bestows exalted pleasures from time-to-time upon a certain number of citizens. Social equality confers a number of small enjoyments on every man, every day.
See Also
Populism II: The Appeal of Dictatorships is Also Equality
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