Where Nietzsche and Mencken are both wrong

Mencken from his introduction to Nietzche's The Antichrist.The fact is that Nietzsche had no interest whatever in the delusions of the plain people--that is, intrinsically. It seemed to him of small moment _what_ they believed, so long as it was safely imbecile. What he stood against was not their beliefs, but the elevation of those beliefs, by any sort of democratic process, to the dignity of a state philosophy--what he feared most was the pollution and crippling of the superior minority by intellectual disease from below.
This a bald statement of Menckens's low regard for the mass of people. Why is it wrong. Why was Nietzsche wrong insofar as he embraced the same view.For the same reason that racism is wrong.The ascription of special and elevated qualities according to class and wealth and occupancy of this or that elite is a profound and sad philosophical error.Our current Tea Party fracas is a case in point.Democracy is the value which cuts through this crap.It is why we have the positive moments like Tahrir Like the civil right movement of the 1960sThere is no class or elite or race that encompasses either saintly or despicable valuesThe ontological value of democracy can be willed by anyone and when it is willed it is not submersion in a hateful mass that it seeksIt is the same rights for all
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