Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

A young boy admiring the knight. From bygoneamericana. Photo taken by Wayne Miller, USA in 1955.

The apex of egalitarianism is to say, “Well, that carriage wheel didn’t have to be that precious. It could well have been just a plain wheel.  Why has this pretentious woman [the Queen of Denmark] procured that crystal wheel?” This is the tail of the snake of egalitarianism rattling.

It is characteristic of an anti-egalitarian mentality to wish to see and desire and always love what is more sublime and elevated and therefore to set it apart from what is what is less sublime and elevated.

An anti-egalitarian and hierarchical mind seeks the highest things but does not despise or hate simple things. And if a person without the egalitarian spirit is poor, he lives in poverty in a dignified way without despising his poverty. What he despises is not that which is poor but that which is vulgar.

The interior of the Holy House of Mary, Mother of God, as it is today in Loreto, Italy.

The house of the Holy Family in Nazareth was very poor but not vulgar. Everything was well arranged, everything was in order, clean and elevated even within poverty. This is not what an anti-egalitarian despises. He even considers his own dignified poverty a good thing. What he hates and despises is an ambience blatantly messed up out of love for dirtiness and vulgarity. This is precisely what he hates. 

So here is a first point: to seek to examine ourselves and to continuously cultivate this state of mind which elevates our spirit to the heights of God’s love. Here is the first feature of an anti-egalitarian mentality. 

Note: Excerpt from a Saint of the Day, Tuesday, April 19, 1966 – Nobility.org translation.