Well, Michael Springate, I looked, but I couldn't find the quote. Carrol
Cox seems to think it exists. But to answer your questions let me say that I
think it's just that the poor have to find their contentment in something
other than a conspicuous consumption which requires wealth but is so
importantly regarded in this country and beyond. They don't know how much of
it they don't need like Thoreau's poor Irishman who had to have sugar for
his tea.
    The articles by Tamas (I also looked at his "Two Hundred year War") were
informative and did not surprize me. As Americans we unfortunately have the
preconception that we know what's best for everyone else in the world and
expect that conformity to our way of thinking will work elsewhere as well as
it seems to at home. The "democratic" theory as Julius Evola ("Revolt
Against the Modern World") saw it "is that anybody can become anything they
wish to be, provided a certain amount of training and pedagogy be supplied;
in other words man, in himself, is believed to be a shapeless and moldable
substance, just like communism wants him to be when it regards as
antirevolutionary and anti-Marxist the genetic theory of innate qualities
elaborated in the field of biology."
    So that people do not feel the resentment of any percieved position of
inferiority in which they may imagine themselves caught up, we Americans
have devised that great formula-leveler against aristocracy, Wealth=Success.
i.e. "My money is as good as his." "My money is good as yours."
    Again Evola, and here he writes of the American civil religion's
recommendation of this formula- "I have previously discussed what
religiosity is reduced to in Protestanism; once every principle of authority
and hierarchy has been rejected and religiosity has rid itself of
metaphysical interest, dogmas, rituals, symbols, and sacraments, it has
thereby been reduced to mere moralism, which in Puritan Anglo-Saxon
countries, and especially in America, is employed in the service of a
conformist collectivity."
    Then quoting  from A. Siegfried's "Les Etats-Unis d'aujour'hui" 1927,
Evola continues explaining, "Siegfried has correctly pointed out that "the
only American religion is Calvinism, understood as the view according to
which the true cell of the social organism is not the individual, but the
community, 'in which wealth is regarded, in one's mind as well as in
others', as a sign of divine election. Thus 'it becomes difficult to
distinguish between religious aspiration and the pursiut of wealth... It is
regarded as a moral and even as a desirable thing for the religious spirit
to become a factor of social progress and of economic development.'
Consequently the traditional virtues that are required to achieve any
supernatural goal eventually come to be regarded as useless and even
harmful. In the eyes of a typical American, the ascetic is regarded as one
who wastes time, when he is not looked down upon as a social parasite; the
hero, in the ancient sense, is regarded as some kind of fanatic or lunatic
to be neutralized through pacifism and humanitarianism while the fanatical
puritan moralist is himself surrounded by a bright aura." One might compare
as an example the average American's attitude toward, say, Ezra Pound and
Billy Graham. Try it, if you dare.
    Evola then asks the poignant question, "Is all this that far off from
Lenin's recommendation to ostracize 'every view that  is supernatural or
extraneous to class interests' and wipe out as an infectious disease any
residue of independent spirituality?"
    One might criticize Evola for being nothing but another Italian fascist
and a member of the aristocracy to boot, but he expresses sentiments not
different from some of the  greatest American thinkers. Emerson first comes
to mind with his statement concerning conformity, and Twain could provide a
wealth of ammunition for the same purpose, to defend individuality. Then
there is Poe and Mencken, and Pound. And haven't we been engaged here for
weeks in someone's attempt to pull Pound down from his "vitam aeream" and
drag him through endless mud holes of pseudo violations against the "common
man" when the truth is that his Cantos were as McLuhan pointed out in 1948
the reconstruction of a continuing deceitful and exploitive crime and the
glances to a collateral life that might have been and might still be? No one
expects him to fill stadiums like Billy Graham, but then he is not selling
anyone pie in the sky.

CDM