Unlike the feudal past, where power was presumed and privilege inherited, the conservative future envisions a world where power is demonstrated and privilege earned: not in the antiseptic and anodyne halls of the meritocracy, where admission is readily secured—“the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course”101—but in the arduous struggle for supremacy. In that struggle, nothing matters: not inheritance, social connections, or economic resources, but rather one’s native intelligence and innate strength. Genuine excellence
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