Egalitarianism, the scourge against which the modern West seems to have few defences, had its origins in the ancient world, whose people understood it and coped with its dangers and shortcoming a lot better than we did. Like some dormant virus, it lay hidden throughout most of the Middle Ages, to awaken round about the 17th century.
A major reason for its success, after it awoke from its lengthy slumber, was that it managed to infect not only its proponents but also most of its opponents, who were tricked into accepting many of its premises. This includes even the likes of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), the philosopher most readily identified with the defence of monarchy and hierarchy in the early modern period.
But one man who wasn’t tricked by egalitarianism on any level was the English political theorist Sir Robert Filmer, who was born in the same year as Hobbes, the famous year of the Spanish Armada, and who died in 1653, in the midst of the English Republic (1649-1660) that was created by the overthrow and execution of the King.
