Melitón Cardona
Former Spain’s Ambassador to Denmark
Today’s Western democracies are already suffering the effects of that «tyranny of the majority» that was predicted more than a century and a half ago by one of the most powerful political thinkers, Alexis de Tocqueville, who believed that «democracy immaterialises despotism» and that it would end up being «more widespread and sweeter, capable of degrading people without tormenting them»; in him he saw «an innumerable multitude of similar and equal men turning in on themselves to procure little vulgar pleasures with which to fill the emptiness of their souls. Each one of them retired and separated, as if he were alien to the fate of the others, reducing the human species to the circle of his family and friends and…. above them, an immense and tutelary power in charge of ensuring their enjoyment and watching over their fate» from which it follows that, in a democratic system, despotism can become undetectable if it manages to pass itself off as a «welfare state».
That despotism sweetened by the generalized egalitarian foolishness is the one that prevails in our society today. It is enough to have the patience to watch television programs such as «First dates» to realize that the human material that it exhibits shamelessly, basically dedicated to «procuring small vulgar pleasures», could be defined, in Ignacio Ruiz Quintano’s happy phrase, as a mixture of shamelessness and subnormality. It is disturbing to contemplate how a human fauna prone to tattooing and piercings, devotes itself to exchanging banalities and boasting of its ignorance, especially when one considers that it has the right to vote. It is also alarming to note the deterioration in the educational level of students who sacrifice excellence for the sake of equality, which makes them level down through the possession of the same academic degree.
«We don’t know what happens to us and that’s precisely what happens to us,» wrote Ortega y Gasset. Beyond the apparent frivolity of the paradox, we must agree that nothing is more disconcerting in a crisis than the inability to diagnose it and try to remedy it. Therefore, in order to understand that of today’s European society, it is important to bear in mind the far-sighted presentiment of the French viscount: «if Humanity has to choose between freedom and equality, it will always decide in favour of the latter, even at the cost of some coercion, provided that the public authorities provide the minimum necessary standard of living and security». Lord Acton stressed this when he said that «the best opportunity ever presented to the world was wasted because the passion for equality made the hope of freedom futile».
The problem is that the concept of equality is vague and prescriptive rather than descriptive. Pierre Decourcelle ironically wrote that «equality consists in considering ourselves equal to those who are above us and superior to those who are below. The great Colombian thinker Nicolás Gómez Dávila (it is not a contradiction in terminis, as some might think) stated that «the more equal men feel, the more easily they tolerate being treated as interchangeable, substitutable and superfluous pieces. Equality is the psychological precondition for scientific and cold slitting of the throats», since «freedom is the right to be different and equality is the prohibition of being different».
03/08/2018. © All rights reserved
