Jeniffer electronic book

The political thinker who
popularized it in this country was not concerned fundamentally with
harmonizing the essential interest of the individual with the essential
popular or social interest. Jefferson's political system was intended
for the benefit only of a special class of individuals, viz., those
average people who would not be helped by any really formative rule or
method of discrimination. In practice it has proved to be inimical to
individual liberty, efficiency, and distinction. An insistent demand for
equality, even in the form of a demand for equal rights, inevitably has
a negative and limiting effect upon the free and able exercise of
individual opportunities. From the Jeffersonian point of view democracy
would incur a graver danger from a violation of equality than it would
profit from a triumphant assertion of individual liberty. Every
opportunity for the edifying exercise of power, on the part either of an
individual, a group of individuals, or the state is by its very nature
also an opportunity for its evil exercise.


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