For generations, a vast majority of writers, artists and academics have sided with Romanticism, from Keats and Shelley to nearly every modern musician or movie star. I like the aesthetics of the Victorian age. With nearly all of society's most expressive and persuasive voices raised on the Romantic side of this old struggle, it is a wonder that notions of cooperative progress and confident pragmatism survive at all. Even science fiction has grown much more cynical, with noir cyberpunk images replacing much of the can-do spirit of earlier tales. Values like competence and egalitarian advancement are seldom defended in media.
Individualism is fine.
The rest of us need fairness more than we need egomania. We rely daily on the amiable skill of countless strangers, rich in craft and diversity, who are fellow citizens of a civilization. They are more important to us than any Leader. There's a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled. He has a point.