to suppose they could get away with it,rnand Ms. Harman, in her interviews,rnsounded surprised as well as bitter at thernbother she caused. Was not one vesselrnmade to honor, she may well have felt,rnand another to dishonor? I do not knowrnif she has read Hogg’s novel. But herrnfrank reply that it is all right to violaternprinciple if others do it too strikes a sympatheticrnchord.rnThe justified sinner in the post-rnCalvinist style, thinking left and livingrnright, is not necessarily a hypocrite. Hernmay genuinely believe that a declarationrnof social justice is enough. He may genuinelyrnbelieve that he is not bound by thernrules he insists should be enforced onrnothers. Do as I say, not as I do. The purityrnof his convictions justifies him inrnseeking riches, power, honor, and privilegesrnfor himself and his own. If anyonernchallenges him, he will reply with morerndeclarations about social justice.rnThat, after all, has been the spirit ofrnthe cenhir’. Psychoanalysis has long encouragedrnthe belief that to be open aboutrnone’s desires is to render them harmless,rnor at least less harmful. As a view it mayrnbe faintly ridiculous, but it is too open tornbe called hypocritical. It is rather commonrnto think that frankness justifies a violationrnof principle; it is entirely possiblernto be sincere about social justice and tornbelieve, at the same time, that it hasrnnothing to do with oneselfrnThe t)’pe, which is little more than arncentury old, has only a short history,rnsince the ideal of social equality has hadrnonly a short life. In earlier centuries,rnwhen charit)- to the poor was a recognizedrnduty, its object was not to abolishrnpovert)’ but to mitigate it; and even whenrnthe French revolutionaries of 1789 spokernof Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, thernmiddle term meant no more than equalityrnbefore the law. Liberals were openlyrnthe enemies of equality of condition.rnGladstone, who became the first Liberalrnprime minister of Britain in 1868, calledrnhimself an Inequalitarian, and believedrn(perhaps rightly) that he had inventedrnthe word. It meant that if equality ofrncondition were by some miracle to bernachieved, he, as an exponent of free tradernand the free market, would be in favor ofrnabolishing it. To establish equality, afterrnall, or even to try to establish it, is to destroyrnliberty. You cannot have equality ofrncondition and liberty, too, and the pointrnwas once widely understood and openlyrnproclaimed.rnThe cult of social equality, on the otherrnhand, is new, though like other newrncults, it has its precursors. In a maidenrnspeech in the House of Lords in Februaryrn1812, the sixth Lord BvTon, nowadaysrnbetter remembered as a poet than as arnlegislator, passionately defended thernNottingham workers whose riots againstrnnew machinery had recently been suppressed;rnbut several years later, in exilernin Italy, he showed no concern about thernwelfare of his own workers when hisrnlawyers sold his mines to provide a settlementrnto the wife he had deserted and tornpay debts arising from his profligate st)’lernof life. Byron’s eminent example castsrna long shadow forward across our ownrncentury. Picasso supported the FrenchrnCommunist Party during the occupationrnof Paris, but when I was there soon afterrnthe liberation, it was said that if you wantedrnto know where to eat well, it wasrnenough to ask where Picasso had dinedrnlast night. Jean-Paul Sartre, who calledrnthe Soviet Union the better side, sat on arnresistance committee during the Occupation,rnbut that is all he did. UnlikernSamuel Beckett, who was actively anti-rnNazi, Sartre and his friend Simone dernBeauvoir took no action against thernNazis but shared a table at the Cafe dernF’lore in the Boulevard St. Germain,rnwhere they sat for hours talking and writing.rn”We were intellectuals, you see,” Simonernde Beauvoir told an interviewerrnyears later, shocked that anyone shouldrnsuppose they should have performed activernservice. To hold views that were politicallyrncorrect was enough, in her view,rnand it justified doing nothing.rnThe tradition has its comic aspects.rnBertrand Russell, the third Earl, who wasrnthe hero of the New Left in its heady daysrnin the 1960’s, never to the end of his lifernlearned how to make a cup of tea, in spiternof elaborate written instructions left byrnhis housekeeper on her afternoons offrnNo doubt a hatred of nuclear arms andrnan incapacity to boil a kettle are not incompatible.rnTom Driberg, for years arnleading figure on the Labour Left in thernHouse of Commons and eventually partyrnchairman, was once heard raising a patricianrnvoice to a waiter: “What do vournmean, you can’t get oysters?” That wasrnon his way home from a party conference,rnand the experience must haverntaught him that political campaigningrncan mean having to rough it. AneurinrnBevan, who led the Labour Left in thern1950’s, was famous in his last years for livingrnon a diet of caviar and champagne,rnand boasted the richest complexion to bernseen in Brifish public life, along with onernof its amplest waistlines. The rulers ofrnMarxist states, meanwhile, like Tito ofrnYugoslavia, Ceausescu of Rumania, andrnMengistu of Ethiopia, built lavishrnpalaces for their own use, some of whichrnhave now been thriftily turned intornluxury hotels. Nenni, leader of the ItalianrnSocialist Party in its Marxist days,rnonce posed for a group of cameramen afterrna sumptuous picnic, held out a boiledrnegg, and announced, “Give it to thernpoor”; and President Castro of Cuba isrnrumored to be one of the richest men inrnthe world. It is one of the consolafions ofrnmiddle-aged reformers that the inequalifiesrnthey revile will in all likelihood outlivernthem. But they should not supposernthat their conduct will pass unnoticed,rneven while they live.rnGeorge Watson is a Fellow of St. John’srnCollege, Cambridge. His latest book,rnThe Lost Literature of Socialisiri, willrnappear shortly.rnGUNSrnGuns andrnthe Pressrnby William R. TonsornBrrrrrrrrrrrrt! Brrrrrrrrrrrrt! As thernshooter sprayed his target, his gunrnejected a steady stream of shiny spentrnbrass cartridges. Millions of Americansrnwatched this impressive demonstrationrnon their TV screens, while the NBC reporterrninformed them that the legislationrnsoon to be voted on by the House orrnSenate would ban “assault weapons.” Inrna slightly different version of the scenario,rna prominent gun-control activistrnwould state that the guns covered byrnthe ban, presumably guns like the onernbeing demonstrated, were of no value tornhunters or sportsmen. So what?rnSo this: The gun being demonstratedrnwas a /i(//-automatic, a machine gun,rnthat fires as long as the trigger is heldrnback. The guns covered by the legislationrnwere semf-automatics, which—howeverrnmuch they may look like machinernguns—fire only one shot per trigger pull.rnLegal machine gun possession by AmerlANUARYrn1999/41rnrnrn