In Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Randle McMurphy finds himself incarcerated in the ward of an insane asylum trying to convince his fellow inmates to stand up for themselves against the bullying of Nurse Ratched. At one point, he shouts at Dale Harding, there to be "cured" of being gay, "hell, I been surprised how sane you guys all are. As near as I can tell you’re not any crazier than the average asshole on the street." With this classic statement of American egalitarianism, McMurphy tears down all of the hierarchical assumptions that make some people feel superior and others inferior. For him the question is not who is sane and who insane in some snooty division of us and them. Instead, his is a planet crowded with different assholes all believing different things and seeing the world in different ways. His let-it-all-hang-out egalitarian attitude is able to accept diversity. He is able to liberate the other inmates from their "psychology of servitude" by showing them, not how to conform to society's idea of some political or moral correctness, not how to fit into the prevailing paradigm, but how to ignore society's great shaking finger of shame and, like him, just be themselves.

He is able to do this not because of his superior intellect or his ability to reason and reach logical conclusions; he is able to do this because he has no use or respect for intellect at all. He knows, instinctively, that all of the big words of intellectuals are basically BS, and that at bottom everyone, including himself, is an asshole. Another Sixties icon, the cartoonist Robert Crumb, has a group of black kids confronting an uptight "Whiteman" by telling him, "You jis' a nigger like evva body else. No more, no less, Mutha." This is the beginning of equality.

When Martin Luther attacked the hierarchical assumptions of the Catholic Church and started the Protestant Reformation, he laid the cornerstones of these democratic ideals, not that we are all saints but all sinners. He is quoted as having once said, "The world is an asshole, and I am ripe shit. We are due to be parted soon." No holier-than-thou saint he! Nathaniel Hawthorne used the term "brotherhood of sinners" for this idea that we are all created equal not because we are all potential Gods but because we are all equally confused, equally selfish, equally prideful, equally the helpless victims of forces beyond our comprehension and control. An even older phrase for this was "original sin." The American Puritan Jonathan Edwards added an explanation of its significance:

This doctrine [of original sin] teaches us to think no worse of others than of ourselves; it teaches us that we are all, as we are by nature, companions in a miserable, helpless, condition; which under a revelation of the divine mercy, tends to promote mutual compassion.

The line that runs from the Puritans' belief in original sin through Jefferson's proclamation that "all men are created equal" to McMurphy's "You're not any crazier than the average asshole out there on the street" to the Bart Simpsons of today's TV, is the democratic ideal that we are all the same under our masks, if not equally Gods then equally idiots, but equal. While this may not seem particularly inspiring at first, you can find here the first step to self-confidence, the realization that even though we may ourselves be less than perfect, no one else, not even the snooty Harvard grads, are any better. Our voices are just as good as theirs if their voices are just as bad as ours. If all beliefs are equally irrational, contingent, and tied to self-interest, that goes for everyone. "The whole Universe," crows Mr. Natural, "is completely insane!" So, relax. Under all the lies and disguises, you are not any worse than the rest of them.