Idle Thoughts
In letter exchanges with John Adams as well as in his own autobiographical writings Thomas Jefferson proposed that, “instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger, than benefit, to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society, and scattered with equal hand through all its conditions….”
But of course what we have today, some 200 years later, is still an aristocracy of wealth, along with an aristocracy of merit, in particular an aristocracy of verbal and mathematical merit, aka as intelligence, although with ample room and ample recompense for the many talented ones who entertain us.
We are still without an aristocracy of virtue, perhaps even more so than in Jefferson’s time.
