It is noteworthy that the men who were foremost in extolling the eminence of the savage impulses of our barbarian forefathers were so frail that their bodies would not have come up to the requirements of “living dangerously.” Nietzsche even before his mental breakdown was so sickly that the only climate he could stand was that of the Engadin valley and of some Italian districts. He would not have been in a position to accomplish his work if civilized society had not protected his delicate nerves against the roughness of life. The apostles of violence wrote their books under the sheltering roof of “bourgeois security” which they derided and disparaged. They were free to publish their incendiary sermons because the liberalism which they scorned safeguarded freedom of the press.

The Marxist Karl Mannheim was presented with a problem: If everybody is determined by their class interest, what about intellectuals? What about Marx, who was obviously a bourgeois type, and so forth. Where do they fit in? His answer was that intellectuals free float. They levitate above the class struggle. So everybody else is determined but we’re free. This is the typical determinist argument: All you guys are determined but I’m not. I’ve somehow broken through and have free will.