SELFISH: concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself
Long, long ago in a world now far, far away, I was reading of an eighteenth-century Scottish historian who suggested democracy would always eat itself. A people starting in bondage would develop great courage, he said. That would lead to liberty, in turn liberty would lead to abundance, abundance to selfishness, selfishness to complacency, complacency to apathy, apathy to dependence and thus back to bondage.
I had thought him wrong then and gave much of my life to prove him so, but I would not now. Age has given me clarity; a clarity I wish I did not have. Selfishness takes primacy in all beings and is particularly evident amongst human beings. How else could it be that we have ended the existence of so many other species and now stand on the precipice of ending our own.
Or as H. L Mencken, a devout conservative wrote, “As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissist moron.”
Richard Kimball
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