“May One Kill a Terrorist?” is a typical title. In this case, it originates from a long piece published by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung which is rated among the ten best papers globally. The answer the title implies regarding the proper treatment of those that kill by principle comes at the end of the piece. It is an oblique: “No.” A characteristic letter also stands out in your correspondent’s mind. It condemns the killing of OBL and reproaches that the disrespectful American street celebrates. Naturally, disparaging remarks regarding Bush, Iraq and Afghanistan also adorn the message.

This column has forecast a development that, regrettably, does not really deserve the term “prediction”. The easy prognosis of the self-evident pertained to the after-the-event analysis of how the liquidation of bin Laden will be interpreted. At the time this is written, and even more so by the time you will read this, the tactical success of eliminating the icon of radical Islamism, namely the killing of the “Lion of Islam”, is subjected to corrective chiding by armchair moralists. They do so with the help of the unnecessary airing given in Washington to the details of the SEALs’ action. This judgmental crowd holds membership in the fan-club of movements that aim to discredit and to destroy modern society, its supporting order and that negate all of its achievements.

The skeptical foes implicated by the above are by no means restricted to the active participants and supporters of Jihadism. The cause of this crowd is supported by the prejudices of avowed and undercover operating Marxists, the “Greens” and of civilizations skeptics. Therefore, the reluctance to give credit and the inclination to be condemnatory is not accidental. The stance in the OBL matter reveals the defining trait of those that fear nothing more than any success of Western Civilization.

The resentment comes from three areas.

1. The crowd of the “scribes” detect, as the object of their disapproval, a declaration of war on propriety in anything that they are unable to control. Through this process, they wind up as critics of democratic political processes, respectively of their not pre determinable results.
2. Furthermore, any social system that provides for mobility based on merit is, in its outcome, also viewed with disdain. Furthermore, the force behind an economic order that opens the door to the good life for its participants is equally rejected.
3. Accordingly, by harnessing the individual energy of free individuals interacting in a free market is distrusted and opposed. For these reasons, while disagreeing with some of the tactics of resistance, even the harshest foes of individual liberty that act in the name of a higher ideal enjoy sympathy. Why is this the case, you may ask.

First, in practice, the democratic process will produce uncontrollable results. This comes about by giving power to persons, parties or by approving measures that might contradict the preferences of elitist minorities. The consent of the masses is fickle. Also, if free, they are more than the obediently flag waving participants of symbolic march-byes before their leaders. To some elites, democracy is in theory welcome while in its practical application it is a resented threat. Even at the time when the Enlightenment formulated modern democracy’s intellectual foundations, some supporters assumed that the mass to be empowered can be steered by its benefactors. Directed or guided democracy is, as an assumption and a desired condition, part of the original sin of the intellectuals. The better educated tend to conclude that their titles are entitlements.

To what? To influence and to lead from the moral heap made into a commanding height by their creed. Therefore, much disappointment arises by the rejection of guidance by the “morally illiterate” and “materialistic” mass. That force is suspected to be incapable to tell which leaders are their friends and what their interests might be. The resulting departure from the true path confirms the elitist’s distrust of the ability of the born-to-be-led to set their sights sufficiently high to be “right”. In our day, the resulting attitude is expressed by the preaching about the ruinous implications of “populism”. The majority that opts in its own behalf in favor of measures it desires is suspect. After all, the autonomous process that determines what the common veal is, ignores and often counter-acts, the worldview of proclaimed elites.

Second. Power that is limited to the issuing of moral pronouncements is meaningless. The right to preach finds its purpose in the ability to structure the social order accordingly and to regulate behavior within its confines. In ideological terms, the order that determines relationships –subservience and dominance- is supposed to be a construction of men that are above the turmoil that unfolds below them. Thereby, the order that directs individuals and groups that make up society is to be the expression of am idea. The understanding of an idea, which confers the moral right to apply it to determine practical life, follows from that legitimizing will. Notice: the consent of the immature is not an indispensable component of the scheme.

In that light, a conception cannot expect approval if it leaves the monitoring of social relationships and the determination of who gets what subject to what seems to be “chance”. An order that truly places individuals on a scale that reflects their own proven and peer-approved merit, likes to relate success to the participants’ deserves. This might be another way to confirm that those subject to such a system are free also in this aspect of their existence. Thereby the freedom enjoyed in the political realm is rounded out. Yes, this meritocracy may match the fairness concept of most of its participants. Nevertheless, access to goods and prestige that is allocated according to a majority’s judgment, has its detractors.

Third. The principle of giving access to consumption and to recognition “by agreed upon merit only” always needs to replace another type of order. By the rules challenged, not measurable merit but other factors are regarded as the ethically correct determinants of individual status and rewards.

Merit and performance, as set by society’s consensus has, besides relying on the evaluation by the “common man”, an additional negative. It is that this standard is not sufficiently egalitarian in the judgment of the elite that favors a redistributive state. Our intelligence, skill, the ability and courage to innovate, as well as the drive to succeed is unevenly distributed. So is the ability to hit a ball with a bat, to invent the wheel, or to write poetry. The intellectual class distrusts those avenues to success and recognition that it cannot control. In part, the elite’s power has its roots in its function to guarantee nearly equal results –just think of the concept behind progressive taxation- overcoming unequal inputs. Controlling the reward-dispersing mechanism endows the one that pulls the lever with power. The official goal of equality in the context of unequal individuals makes those in charge of leveling all powerful and thus “more equal”.

The writer himself is part of the guild of professional intellectuals. Their distrust of the common man and his preferred order is as pronounced as is the intellectual class’ inclination to denigrate common sense. Some of the belches that comment OBL’s killing make one conclude that this element is afraid of many things. The dread of letting a democratized, autonomous and advanced civilization winning stands out among these.