The Servile Mind

How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life

Kenneth Minogue

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781594036361
• eBook ISBN: 9781594036514
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

One of the grim comedies of the twentieth century was that miserable victims of communist regimes would climb walls, swim rivers, dodge bullets, and find other desperate ways to achieve liberty in the West at the same time that progressive intellectuals would sentimentally proclaim that these very regimes were the wave of the future. A similar tragicomedy is playing out in our century: as the victims of despotism and backwardness from Third World nations pour into Western states, academics and intellectuals present Western life as a nightmare of inequality and oppression.In The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life, Kenneth Minogue explores the intelligentsia’s love affair with social perfection and reveals how that idealistic dream is destroying exactly what has made the inventive Western world irresistible to the peoples of foreign lands. The Servile Mind looks at how Western morality has evolved into mere "politico-moral” posturing about admired ethical causes—from solving world poverty and creating peace to curing climate change. Today, merely making the correct noises and parading one’s essential decency by having the correct opinions has become a substitute for individual moral responsibility.Instead, Minogue argues, we ask that our governments carry the burden of solving our social—and especially moral—problems for us. The irony is that the more we allow the state to determine our moral order, the more we need to be told how to behave and what to think. Such is the servile mind.

INDEX

abstract thinking

abstraction of rights

abundance

of communication

material

of politics

acceptability

acceptance

activism

address

formality of

informality of

administrators

adoption by same-sex couples

adult status, defined

advantages. See also benefits

advertising

affirmative action

aggregation fallacy

aid to underdeveloped countries

alcohol, banning of

alienation

altruism

ambivalence

culture vs. ideals of transformation and

dp n="372" folio="352" ?

mapping politics and

oppressions and liberations and

perfectionism and

politico-moral association and

politico-moral idealism and

politico-moral movement and

Amish

anciens régimes

Anscombe, G. E.

anti-discrimination. See

also discrimination

discrimination as category and

hierarchical relationships and

minorities and

negations of

political correctness and

the poor and

sentimentalism and

vocabulary of

the vulnerable and

antinomians

anti-Semitism

anti-social behavior

appeasement

arbitrary arrest

aristocracies

aristocrats

Aristotle

arrogance

asylum seekers. See also immigrants; migration

atomization of society

Attlee, Clement

auctoritas

Augustine, Saint

Austen, Jane

Austin, John

Austria

authority

fear and

mistrust of

rejection of

statehood and

teachers and

autonomy

Bagehot, Walter

balance and conflict

Beccaria, Cesare

Becket, Thomas à

Beerbohm, Max

behavior

anti-social

conflict vs.

Belloc, Hilaire

benefactors

benefits. See also advantages

benevolence. See also compassion

dp n="373" folio="353" ?

Bentham, Jeremy

bequests to children

Berlin, Isaiah

bigotry

birth control

blacks

discrimination against

overrepresentation of

Blair, Tony

“blue sky” aspirations

Bolshevik illusion

Bono

Booker, Christopher

Bosanquet, Bernard

bourgeois society. See also capitalism

bourgeoise

bribery

British Reform Acts

Buddhism

Burke, Edmund

busyness

Calvin, John

capital punishment

capitalism

as causal force

as communist rhetorical weapon

greed and

individualism and

the moral life and

servility and

social responsibility and

socially atomizing theory of

as source of all evils

cash nexus

Castiglione, Baldassare

categorical prestige

category mistakes

celebrity culture

centrism

Chamberlain, Neville

change

democracy as

European civilization and

as liberation

political

resistance to

charities. See also Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs)

cheating on exams

checks and balances

children

anti-social behavior and

authority over

bequests to

classic utility of

competitive sports and

corporal punishment and

destruction of childhood and

discrimination against

educational disciplines of

dp n="374" folio="354" ?

engineering attitudes and skills of

failure in school and

feral

impulsiveness and

justice an...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Introduction
• I - DEMOCRATIC AMBIGUITIES
• II - THE PROJECT OF EQUALIZING THE WORLD
• III - THE MORAL LIFE AND ITS CONDITIONS
• IV - THE POLITICO-MORAL WORLD
• V - AMBIVALENCE AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION
• END NOTES
• INDEX
• Copyright Page