Since he who longs to achieve does not ask whether the seat is soft of the weather at a pleasant temperature, it is obvious that hardness is a condition of heroism. Exertion, self-denial, endurance, these make the hero, but to the spoiled child they connote they connote the evil of nature and the malice of…
Read moreWeaver on De Tocqueville & the Motivation of Faith
De Tocqueville, alert to discern the effects of different social ideals, noted this well: “In ages of faith, the final end of life is placed beyond life. The men of those ages, therefore, naturally and almost involuntarily accustom themselves to fix their gaze for many years on some immovable object toward which they are constantly…
Read moreWeaver on the Spoiled-Child Psychology
Only by these facts can we explain the spoiled-child psychology of the urban masses. The scientists have given him the impression that there is nothing he cannot know, an false propagandists have told him that there is nothing he cannot have. Since the prime object of the latter is to appease, he has received concessions…
Read moreWeaver on Dismissing History
The man of culture finds the whole past relevant; the bourgeois and the barbarian find relevant only what has some pressing connection with their appetites. Weaver, Richard M., Ideas Have Consequences, p. 100.
Read moreWeaver on Resilience to Media Mendacity
The common man realizes that he has been misled and that there are those who would mislead him again; but, lacking analytical power, he tends to group every instance of organized expression with propaganda. In times of peace, too, he has exhibited a certain hardheaded resistance to attempts to drive or cajole him. We have…
Read moreWeaver Quoting Plato on Egotism
Inevitably there follows an increase of selfishness. It is the simple nature of egotism to view things out of proportion, the “I” becoming dominant and the entire world suffering a distortion. . . as Plato saw: “the excessive love of self is in reality the source to each man of all offenses; for the lover…
Read moreWeaver Predicts Modern Politics
The gentleman was left to walk the stage an impecunious eccentric, protected by a certain sentimentality but not longer understood. Europe, after the agony of the first World War, trend to the opposite type for leadership, to gangsters, who, though they were often good entrepreneurs, are without codes and without inhibitions. Such leaders in Europe…
Read moreWeaver on Egalitarianism and Despotism
When it was found that equality before the law has no effect on inequalities of ability and achievement, humanitarians conceded that they had been tricked into asking only part of their just claim. The claim to political equality was then supplemented by the demand for economic democracy, which was to give substance to the ideal…
Read moreWeaver on Egalitarianism implying Egoism
Fraternity directs attention to others, equality to self; and the passion for equality is simultaneous with the growth of egoism. Weaver, Richard M., Ideas Have Consequences, p. 39. Resentment, as Richard Hertz has mad explain, may well prove the dynamite which will finally wreck Western society. Ibid., p. 40.
Read moreWeaver on Feeling versus Thinking
Underlying the shift is the theory of romanticism; if we attach more significance to feeling than to thinking, we shall soon , by a simple extension, attach more to wanting than to deserving. Weaver, Richard M., Ideas Have Consequences, p. 34.
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