text: The productive class consists of natural liberals who want a system in which people reap the rewards of their accomplishments and receive the just consequences of their misdeeds. Such people believe in liberty and are willing to accept the personal responsibility without which liberty cannot exist. The nation's aristocracy, by contrast, needs a powerful, controlling state in order to maintain their perks, privileges, and prestige based on an elaborate scheme of mannerisms and shibboleths no less rigid and arbitrary than those of the court of Louis XIV.