ABSTRACT
The examination and analysis of the new Jacobinism has shown it to be a reasonably coherent ideology built around several closely connected ideas, including "equality", "virtue", "democracy", and "capitalism". Neo-Jacobin ideology should be further differentiated by comparing and contrasting it with more traditional notions of man, society, and the world. The work of Allan Bloom, one of the most widely read and celebrated contributors to neo-Jacobin ideology, is here as in other respects particularly instructive. This chapter shows that a Jacobin advocacy of equality is a major source of the problems of Western democracy. Attempts by traditional conservatives to blame the decline of Western society in the twentieth century on a "revolt of the masses" were largely misdirected. Many distinguish between "equality of results", which is supposed to be bad, and "equality at the starting line", which is supposed to be good.
