The tyranny of the majority of stupid

Via the Devil’s Kitchen, I came across this article from Behind Blue Eyes:

Several weeks back I was honoured to receive an email from one of the top people on the list on the right. “Fancy a pint this week”, it [approximately] read, “at the usual place?”. The “usual place” being a brightly-lit loudly-musicked characterless vermin-infested modern pit, of the kind described so aptly by Betjeman, chosen for its cheap beer and mutual convenience in London’s Zone Two.

At one point the beam of conversation settled briefly on the subject of the dystopian novel. I remarked on how contemporary Britain looks much more like Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four. Authoritarian government is much easier when the populace is materially rich, I opined. Hardly an original comment, but one that I felt had been ignored in the libertarian blogosphere’s discussion of New Labour’s legacy.

The author goes on to note the seeming trend toward ignorance in society – particularly British society – which leads to a less user-friendly form of government, and he’s got some ideas that you definitely check out.

But what I had wanted to focus on was that statement about the rich. While I tend to be in a general state of agreement with the sentiment that – particularly in politics – the Tyranny of the Majority tends to also be remarkably obtuse about things they shouldn’t be obtuse about, it strikes me as odd that the author would point toward the materially rich as the tier of the societal hierarchy which is friendliest to Statism. Why, you might ask?

Well, I’m not a history major, and I’m not a history buff. I am by no means an expert in the history of liberalism. But from what little I do recall, the driving force behind most of the revolutionary movements that first fostered liberalism, in Europe at least, were the middle-class bourgeois. In fact, I believe that it was this bourgeois-driven liberal democracy that a good amount of the resentment that fueled the rise of socialism found its origin in, and the interaction of the richer bourgeois and the poorer socialists, I think, has led to a lot of the development and evolution of Social Democracy and the Welfare State.

I’m not saying that the rich are not necessarily friendly to the idea of Statism. Indeed, if one views the corporate culture side of the rich class, it’s more than happy to buddy up to the state in order to get all manner of perks, and to make things more difficult for their smaller-class brethren by cheerleading invasive legislation. But that does not mean that the rich as a whole are inherently for Statism. In fact, I would think that some would be decidedly anti-Statist, considering that in many cases, the government can act as a hindrance and a nuisance for the pursuit and enjoyment of material gain.

This is all supposing that I may be entirely wrong. But the question arose in my mind. What do you, the dear, beloved reader think?