Protection allocates benefits but the act of protecting empowers.

Our official culture is PC infected. Among the premises of the imposed propriety of that virus is that certain groups will, unless protected, become victims of the majority. According to this, the view the majority of the minority is generally prejudiced. At the same time, the negative view of the minority concerning the majority is justified because it expresses an unadulterated culture. Illustrative is an element of the US’ election. If 90+% of Afro-Americans vote for Obama that is an expression of rational approval. If 50% of whites contemplate not to vote for BHO, then that is racism. Those favored by PC are said to require varying degrees of protection. The extent to which the sheltering is justified is ignored to avoid the charge of “racism”. 

A nasty suspicion arises. It seems that the protected need protection to a lesser extent  than the protectors require their function as guardians. The role they grab enables the protecting defenders of whatever, to proclaim a morally elevated role. Thereby the function gives the protectors status and power. Thus, a moral platform is created from which their position can be trumpeted without the risk of much critical examination. The benefit even understates the gain of occupying a selectively moral stand. Once on the soap-box of propriety, any question of it will condemn the moral midget that raised it.

Protection implies two roles. One of them is the function of the, by definition, mighty protector. Protecting gives power. It also serves as a shroud of virtue, thus as a condition that limits the critical control of the power that is exercised.

Furthermore, patronage reduces the one it protects into a client. Once the language used is decoded, that means that the protected owe fealty to their protector. Creating an indebted class produces repayment at the ballot box. Old Rome, but not only it, in the state of its decline, occurs as an analogy. 

The policy of “benefits to all” has roots in the original success story of our civilization. It has created through its unleashed productivity the wealth that enables us to lose sight of the plenty’s origins. That amnesia suggests that “justice” will be served if allocation is not left to the “market” but is made the business of the politically empowered. At the same time, flashing signs point to a related and scary possibility. It is that redistribution and hand-outs given without merit and previous contribution, undermine our way of life. Compare the tendency to legalizing “withdrawals” without “funds in the account”. They do more than to stress the bookkeeping that assures the well-being of nations. 

In the past, our political system attempted to give power to those that, through their industry, have deserved it. We are at a stage in which the old policy of “to each according to his contribution” is replaced. The new mantra is “to each according to his demand”. Having said that, a matching idea of Marx occurs. The difference is that what is tagged here as the sign of a decay, is depicted there as a desirable policy.

Marx claimed that to go from general poverty to general well-being demands that we trod from individual betterment through personal striving, to the general sharing of the fruits of our industry. The process is said to assure advancement although it brings degeneration. It takes us from the unequally distributed earned wealth to that of equally shared misery. To the left this implies an order of justice. To the skeptics, people being individuals, are dissimilar. This singularity expresses itself in different inputs and expectations that reflect innate abilities and values. Therefore, even if equal chances are provided, these will lead to deservedly unequal results. 

The political class’ power comes from providing equal results for unequal contributions. Nature, which makes us unequal in ability and motivation, creates differentiated results. We also have individually rooted preferences that evaluate these. We are free to consider the contribution of the hermit and the creator of a product responding to the demand of masses, to be equal. The democratic decision making process accommodates all parties and gives them the right to choose either.

Increasingly, a struggle unfolds. It pits what sounds good to those that think they can afford esoterics, against those that favor the facts of common sense based on the chosen goals of the common man. If you agree, then the issue has only been seemingly decided around 1776. The struggle continues. Earlier it pitted the entitlement of aristocracies against the common man. Today the entitlement of under achievers confronts the providers of society. Reallocation as a policy priority puts freedom in question. It is order under liberty that has created the wealth that is now made subject to reallocation.

Soon the American voter will render a verdict in this dispute. He will do so by selecting a candidate that stands on a platform expressing one of contending approaches. 

The issue is whether one is to have a public order that recognizes individuality and that rewards according to the merit attributed by a mass allowed to judge what persons have to offer. This is the aggregate decisions by “little people” that express their preference through their freely asserted purchasing power. Alternatively, we impose a system that rewards by the standards chosen by the morally self-validated judgment of the learned elite. This order is reminiscent to the one which used to be attributed to a God that could only be comprehended by the select. As such, the resulting order could not be subjected to the verdict of the barefooted that were governed by it.

We still live with a decision making process based on the universal franchise. At least formally, majorities continue to be empowered to render decisions. Voting by “weight” (education, correct values) is not yet formally enshrined. Naturally, informal mechanisms that underline or downgrade a view are at work. The media is generally elitist, favoring openly leftist or supposedly liberal causes. The political insider class is, especially in Europe, increasingly acting to retain power within a circle whose fractions ritually contest each other’s access to power. They wish to keep decisions within the hands of clans that formally oppose each other while they agree that power should be used reflecting the correct views of the “families” whose fractions hold it presently.