Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/183

, and especially all those who are superior to him, into accord with his own dull and docile way of thinking, and to force it upon them when they resist, leads him inevitably into acts of unfairness, oppression and dishonour which, if all men were alike guilty of them, would quickly break down that mutual trust and confidence upon which the very structure of civilized society rests. Where democratic man is so firmly in possession of his theoretical rights that resistance to him is hopeless, as it is in large areas of the United States, he actually produces this disaster. To live in a community so cursed is almost impossible to any man who does not accept the democratic epistemology and the Puritan ethic, which is to say, to any well-informed and self-respecting man. He is harassed in so many small ways, and with such depressing violence and lack of decency, that he is usually compelled to clear out. This fact, in large part, explains the cultural collapse of New England and the marked cultural backwardness of whole regions in the South and Middle West. A man of sound sense, born into the Tennessee hinterland, not only feels lonesome as he comes to maturity; he also feels unsafe. The morons surrounding