The American Spectator

p> HISS MAJESTY br> Re: Jeffrey Lord’s The Alger Hiss Democrats : /p> p>Lord’s Hiss essay is beyond good. Chambers’ Witness ought to be required reading for a seat in Congress. Lord’s analysis of Bush is right on. But what makes all of this deeply unsettling is the fact that so few understand the nature of this threat to our freedom and security. br> — Jim Chandler /p>

People like Alger Hiss, John Francois Kerry, Barack Obama, and Bill Maher, elitists all, unquestionably. People of their ilk feel free to bash the very people that provide them the comforts and security they know and take for granted. Chambers was correct in his description of common folks as people who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, but the resentment goes deeper still. The elitists resent that the common folks are the ones who mined and smelt the ore, then built and laid the tracks as well. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel opined that if he had to choose between being a slave or a master, he’d prefer to be a slave because the slave remained in touch with what is real; the slave was the one who produced something. The slave was essential while the master was superfluous.

We, the common men and women, do not ask the elite for thanks. We do our work and draw our pay; that is enough. The elitists once had gratitude for what we do; it is expressed in their writings and philosophies, but gratitude leads to a feeling that a debt is owed, and this sense of indebtedness transmutes good will into resentment: since the elite are neither able nor willing to repay what was freely given, they grow resentful of presence. The common man is not the cause of their resentment; no, it is the elites’ own twisted sense of conscience. Our very living reminds them of all they believe they owe us. Our working reminds them of all they are not.

p>The saddest truth about elitists is they have their beliefs backwards. Yes, meritocracy can lead to some people being held more valuable than others, but that value system, unlike the elitist’s caste system, is based on God given talents, not the luck of the draw of being born (or Kerry’s case, marrying into wealth — twice!). All men are created equal but some strive to be even more than that.