And while it has usually been my task to defend communitynagainst the inroads made by society, it is task perhaps evennmore vital to defend society against the smothering affectionnof world communalism.nWhen men band together for a purpose, that purposendefines a competitive struggle for results both within thengroup and between groups. In a hunting party, it makes littiendifference who you are (which is really all that mattersnwithin a family); it is how good a shot you are, how good antracker, that defines your status and prestige. The best andnmost experienced hunters are the leaders of the group, andngroups that adopt some other principle of leadership —nwealth, social position, good looks, cleverness — will inevitablynlose out in the struggle with other groups that have stucknto the fundamentals. The free market — that amoral competitionnfor economic success — is the preeminent modernninstitution of society, although it is continually beingnhampered and restricted by communalists who hate the verynideas of competition and excellence.nIt is Eros and Eris, love and strife, according to thenpoet-philosopher Empedocles, that rule the world, andnalthough I continue to advocate the primary claims of lovenas the most solid foundation of human morality, let me putnin a word for strife, for competition, for emulation. Withoutnstrife, the striving for superiority over one’s fellows, wenshould be condemned to the life of the Hopi who till thenground and so humiliate their adolescent males that allndecent aspirations for success are either suppressed ornperverted into envy and resentment.nStrife is not limited to personal conflict. It was strife thatnset Athens against Thebes and Sparta, Rome againstnCarthage, Siena and Pisa against Florence, Elizabeth I’snEngland against Philip IPs Spain. What, apart from appallingncarnage, were the results? Virtually everything wencelebrate as the highest products of our civilization: Atticndrama, the Parthenon, Roman law and architecture, Dantenand the Duomo, campanile, and baptistery at Pisa, Shakespearenand the Escorial.nBut strife is responsible for a great deal more thannbeautiful poetry and magnificent buildings. It is only thencompetition within and between social groups that can everncounteract the universal tendency for power to rise to thenhighest level at which it can consolidate. The only writersnwho have fully appreciated the nature of political powernhave been the Italians: Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto,nGaetano Mosca; and their disciples and fellow-travelers:nGeorges Sorel, James Burnham, and Burnham’s interpreter,nSamuel Francis. In the Italian view, whatever the officialnform of a regime may be — monarchy, oligarchy, or democracy—nthe facts of the case will always turn out, uponnexamination, to reveal an elite class (or classes) that controlnthe resources of society and government and manipulatenthem in their own interest. Pareto and Mosca were extremelynskeptical of the prospects of democracy, which they madenthe mistake of viewing as the institutionalization of politicalnequality, because they were aware of how easy it is to rignelections, control the press, and seduce the electorate.nBut our own founding fathers were far from being thendreamy-eyed idealists that are portrayed in Harry Jaffa’snnever-ending stream of letters to National Review. Most ofnthe founders were explicitly opposed to democracy both inn14/CHRONICLESnnnits 18th-century and in its modern sense. Most of them werenRepublicans, whose greatest anxiety was over how to getnaround the well-known fact that all successful republics hadnbeen on a small scale. Even the 13 colonies — to saynnothing of the vast expanse of North America — were toonvast in extent, too varied in character for anything like anunitary government. Their solution was that federal unionnthat perished in the War Between the States.nBut quite apart from the federal principle, at least one ofnthe founders shared the Italian understanding of power.nThomas Jefferson, the most practical and hardheaded of ournnational leaders, was fully aware of the centralizing tendenciesnof power. When the respectable element in NewnEngland took fright at Shays’s Rebellion, Jefferson’s coolnresponse was the last word in Machiavellianism:nGod forbid we should ever be 20 years withoutnsuch a rebellion. The people cannot be all andnalways, well informed. The part which is wrong willnbe discontented in proportion to the facts theynmisconceive. If they remain quiet under suchnmisconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner ofndeath to public liberty. . . . What country cannpreserve its liberties, if their rulers are not warnednfrom time to time that their people preserve thenspirit of resistance? . . . What signify a few lost livesnin a century or two? The tree of liberty must benrefreshed from time to time with the blood ofnpatriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.nThese lines, so often taken as proof of Jefferson’s Jacobinism,nare in fact the best evidence for his political realism. Itnwas only the struggle between states, classes, and interestsnthat enabled Americans to preserve the liberties they hadnsecured in an armed rebellion, and when one section andnone class mustered the power to overwhelm its majorncompetitor, it spelled doom not only for the federal systemnbut, eventually, also for all those habits of liberty that hadncharacterized American life.nSince the nervous edge of a civilization is primarily thenresult of competition, the suppression of social and politicalnconflict has meant progressive decadence in Americannculture. We are doing our best, in this country, to stranglencompetition in every important endeavor. Apart from socializingnand internationalizing our economy, we have reducednour public architecture to the lowest common denominatornof the international style, taken away most market incentivesnfrom artists and writers by subsidizing prose poetry andnperformance art for which there is no market, and — this isnthe masterstroke — created a bureaucratic system of educationnwhose intended effect is the elimination of that strivingnfor intellectual distinction upon which all scholarship,nphilosophy, and literature ultimately rests. By the end of thencentury we shall be a nation of Hopi.nThere are still sufficient remnants of that old America tonkeep this nation viable, partiy because Americans tendnto ignore politics and prefer to concentrate on their ownnlives, and partiy because we have become in some measurenAmerican nationalists who can define ourselves as part of anbody politic in competition with Japan or the Soviet Union.nHowever, the New International Order will soon fix that. If,n