When a conservative savages a poor person, a person of putative lower status, or anyone at a disadvantage, we liberals rush to their defense. But that may be because we truly see that person as weaker than us, as no threat to us, as deserving our aid if not our pity, and we declare righteously that they are our equals.
Carlos Castaneda reports that his witchcraft mentor, Don Juan, asked him if he thought the two of them were equals. Castaneda, thinking immediately of the traditional roles of White Latin-Americans like himself and the indigenous peoples of the New World, assured him he believe it to be so. Don Juan snorted, “No! I am vastly superior to you!”
The conservative may pay the highest respect to the persons he sneers at as his inferiors by fearing them and by believing he must keep his foot on their neck lest they turn their strength on him in a dog-eat-dog world where, the conservative believe, all dogs are truly equal.
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
