the power of the Church.
And, fourth, when those the liberal wing of a political party raise up, economically, these new middle class bourgeoisie inevitably turns conservative.
Democracy is an often misused word. Manent (1995) claims that "Radically depreciating the pretensions to 'virtue' of the nobility, and simultaneously making people 'honest', Machiavelli becomes the first democratic thinker" (Manent 16). And even though this author claims that Machiavelli drew a distinction between the evil in politics and the inherent goodness of people, he never really went so far as to permit these "ordinary" people to assume the powers of The Prince. As one can read the various philosophers, (Hobbes and Rousseau, for example, are more antagonistic or supportive of the Church of their day) there is no one who truly claims that the so-called
"masses" have the power to control a Liberalistic nation. That, one assumes, is left to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, whose "overthrow" theories would put the proletariat in control of not merely the capitalists but all the middle class. And yet, it is clear to Manent for one that the idealism of Liberalism as the font of equality fails ultimately:
democracya.even tells a person things that he would otherwise hesitate to believe completely: that he is just as good as anybody elseaBut what his heart whispers to him, and the law proclaims, the society around him incessantly denies: certain people are richer, more powerful than he (Menant 107).
Nowhere is this insight more relevant than in the American liberals from William Jennings Bryan to Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who need to be wealthy or be beholden to the wealthy in order to run for elective office. While we may have lived during a Liberal period for the eight years of the Clinton administration, it was not an era of equality. To paraphrase George Orwell's Animal Farm: some were (and are) more equal than others. The ideal was...