No love for me and you

Certain secular intellectuals who bear no love for individual persons, only mankind as an idea, think that elites like themselves should inspire rulers around the world. These are (and have been) dangerous, albeit influential, thinkers. How fortunate for us that none of them attained political power; how unfortunate for us that many brutal dictators have used their ideas to enslave mankind and slaughter individuals. Wherever their ego-centric leadership (dictatorship)occurs, individuals play second fiddle to the state. According to writer Paul Johnson, “ the difficulty with their view was that it assumed that humanity, led by the enlightened minority would always progress in a desirable direction. Yet it did not occur to Henrik Ibsen ( and others like Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Tolstoy and Hemingway) that this minority - what Lenin was later to call ‘the vanguard elite’ and Hitler ‘the standard bearers’ - might lead mankind into the abyss.’ I call this minority useful idiots, a phrase coined by someone other than I.

Think Obama and his Democrat administration with their enlightened minority rule in Washington. They admit their health care bill will totally reshape our country. It is designed as a testament to their leader’s ego and legacy. Into what will it re-shape America? My parents and their generation called it ‘socialized medicine.’

Happy New Year, 2010!