I don’t like to praise David Brooks because I’m afraid it makes me look middlebrow. But sometimes he nails it. Today’s column is a tentative, perhaps merely arguendo, defense of the old WASP establishment.
Sure, Brooks observes, positions of power in America are more open to talent—especially the talents of women and ethnic minorities—than they’ve ever been been before. But does anybody think we’re better governed, better banked, better educated, better informed, or even better entertained than we used to be? The old, closed elite had its defects, which include parochialism, puritanism, sexism, racism and the rest of the litany. Nevertheless, they did a pretty good job running our major institutions, partly because the security of their wealth and status allowed them to consider the general interest, and to take a longer view of things.
Another way of putting it is that this country once had a naturally conservative governing class. Needless to say, it no longer does. But does that justify the anti-elitism that’s characterized the conservative movement for the last fifty years—including the present Tea Party fad? I don’t know, but I fear–as I think Brooks does–that populism only exacerbates the problems of a society without a meaningful establishment.
ADDENDUM: Deneen responds to the Brooks piece at the Porch. His post helpfully enumerates some major criticisms of meritocracy. The bottom line is that the old establishment was more humane, but less just.
But I’m not satisfied by his parting shot: that the failure of meritocracy “calls for a different way of being in the world.” That’s true enough in itself. But the suggestion that we can simply choose our way of being in the world is too existentialist for my taste. If we’re to restore any of the old humanity, it must be with the intellectual and cultural materials we’ve been given historically and which circumscribe our possibilities. These now include an expanded sense of justice. It really is a problem of squaring the circle.
February 19th, 2010 | 11:06 am
Exactly. The aristocratic function cannot be dispensed with altogether — and the quest for a perfectly fair aristocracy (“meritocracy”) is inherently end-less, and so must be moderated. In this as in so many ways we are confronting the contradiction between the boundless passion for equal freedom and the way things are, socially, morally and politically. The alternative to a bad establishment can never be no establishment — there is always the possibility of a worse, more irresponsible, establishment. (And that, by the way, is as true at the micro level of the family as at the macro level of the nation.)
February 19th, 2010 | 12:41 pm
The anti-elitism is part of the problem since it foments resentment and envy.
OTOH, when people succeed by birth, you get a lot more variation in how they think that you do when you select them by education.
February 19th, 2010 | 2:56 pm
So here’s the question: How can one defend “elitism” to angry populists–many of whom have very good reasons to be angry, even if they often fix on the wrong targets?
February 19th, 2010 | 3:01 pm
Being a paleo it’s not possible for me to read a David Brooks column without suffering from depression. However, based on your excellent blog I’d like to take issue with your conclusion that “…that populism only exacerbates the problems of a society without a meaningful establishment.”
I don’t find the TPers to be “populists” but rather “conservatives” seeking to do the GOP’s job and locate “conservatives” to run against socialist Democrats and Neocon/RINO Republicans. I’m not sure I’d call it a “fad.” If they succeed, and we’ll know in a few short months, these folks may be around for a very long time. My prayer is that they aren’t co-opted by Neocon/RINO wing of the GOP. My goodness, they may even pull the Paleos back!!
February 19th, 2010 | 3:09 pm
Sam,actually I think the TPers aren’t “populists” rather conservatives seeking “conservative” candidates to run against socialist-Democrats and Neocon/RINO GOP candidates. I disagree with your comment “…that populism only exacerbates the problems of a society without a meaningful establishment,” as I said, the TPers aren’t populists and the fact is they are working assiduously to build a “conservative” electoral elite because the GOP has so miserably failed to do so.
The TPers may very well be around a long time if they aren’t co-opted by the Neocon/RINO controlled GOP. They may even pull the Paleos back!
February 19th, 2010 | 3:47 pm
Well, it depends what you mean by conservative. So far as I can tell, many of the tea partiers are attracted by an unstable syndrome of economic libertarianism (except when it comes to entitlements for old folks), low-church Christianity, a quasi-Caesarist theory of executive power, and militaristic nationalism. These views have a lot to do with the American conservative movement as its developed in the last 50 years. But I’m not sure they’re “conservative” in any deeper sense. (I’d be a lot less worried if I thought that TPs were as anti-neocon as you suggest).
As for populism, anti-elitism may be a better word. If the summary I’ve just given is anything like correct, the TPers aren’t populist in the historical sense. But they do seem to accept the epistemic undercurrent of really radical populism: that “regular folks” have a kind of special virtue or wisdom not only IF they’re ill-educated or inexperienced in public affairs, but BECAUSE they’re ill-educated or inexperienced in public affairs. Again, I’m sure that not everyone associated with the tea parties believes this. But many appear to.
February 19th, 2010 | 5:23 pm
I’m sorry. I have to take the roll of the populist here. Did American have a “naturally conservative” elite during the presidency of FDR? How about under Lincoln when states right were destroyed (do not call me a racist, slavery was bad but the war was not over slavery.) If we needed a protected elite why didn’t it get written into the constitution? Possibly because the “elite” can be like most anything else, good or bad. Right now it’s bad and it is protecting itself and the people (the tea party “fad”) are trying to get a new elite. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams. That’s the elite that I want, not Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. There needs to be a house cleaning, unless of course you think that T.A.R.P, the stimulus, the failed climate change and healthcare legislation were in fact a good “conservative” direction for the country.
February 19th, 2010 | 7:56 pm
Jim, I think you mistake what I’m calling the establishment for the leading politicians of the day. I’m not: I mean the people who the more or less permanent institutions of public life: government agencies, the bar, universities, banks, etc. And yes, this part of the governing class was “naturally conservative” during the presidency of FDR. Among other things, it help confine the New Deal to a relatively modest package of social welfare reforms, rather than becoming the quasi-planned economy that some of FDR’s left-er backers wanted. In my view, this compromise pretty much saved capitalism in this country. And that’s a pretty conservative achievement.
As for a new elite: I too want George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. But I wonder if our populist fellow citizens would if they knew what Washington thought about the rule of law and entangling alliances; what Jefferson thought about religion; and what Adams thought about the wisdom of the common man.
February 19th, 2010 | 8:49 pm
We might want to consider that there would be no discussion of Tpers if there hadn’t been a gross failure of the American political elite (…may we include the academic, economic, and theological elites as well? Yes, I think so.).
And, the elites in having failed in their obligation are being unceremoniously set aside by the unwashed in an effort to save the remnant of the American politeia.
Of course, President Washington epitomized the elite. He was just that, a unique human being in the Aristotelean sense, but it must always be remembered the men who served him, who fought the greatest army of the day, who went without victuals, who resisted the enemy with clubbed muskets and endured every hardship were our ancestors. I had the privilege of shopping with the heirs of these brave men this evening at WalMart.
Their factory jobs have been shipped to China and India by an elite seeking an increase in profits. Their children’s lives are going to be even harder then theirs. They see their country moving further and further to the left, 17% unemployment, a collapsing economy, all the while being led by an incompetent elitist.
They are not happy.
We might want to pray that the Tpers don’t fail, the alternative may not be pleasant.
February 20th, 2010 | 8:22 am
A fine post and a worthy discussion. I’m pretty much with Bob, who recognizes that the Teaparty movement is as conservative as it is populist. I would add that it is a) middle-class, b) more educationally diverse than you’d think, and c) that “what it is” is (within certain limits) pretty much up for grabs, so that the “teaparty” will likely be soon dividing into various factions claiming that they represent the true doctrine.
Oh, and it’s not very important here, but Samuel seems to have a simplistic view of what “neocons” are and what Washington’s foreign policy approach was. Which isn’t to say that a teaparty adoption of a foreign-policy approach defined by an opposite-of-Obama aggressiveness wouldn’t be a very much more simplistic and dangerous thing. Then again, my impression is that the teapartiers aren’t staking claim to a definite foreign policy stance, so as to allow their members to unite on domestic concerns.
February 20th, 2010 | 12:24 pm
Bob: I agree with you that people have good reason to be angry. Moreover, I think they’re right to blame short-sighted CEOs, feckless politicians, etc. The point I was trying to make is that these are the results of the new “meritocratic” elite that replaced the old establishment. And I’m not certain that was a good thing.
Carl:I didn’t bring up the neocon connection. But if it makes you happier to say interventionists (a category that includes many Democrats and liberals), fine. We can talk about Washington another day. Of course his foreign policy views were complicated–but really not that complicated, I think.
February 20th, 2010 | 1:31 pm
Experience in public affairs may also be called “selling out.” Where, after all, do you get this experience? So lack of it may indeed be regarded as a virtue.
February 20th, 2010 | 4:13 pm
Sam, I’m less concerned about the goals and make up of the TPers than I am by the elitist collapse.
I think without a proper aristocracy, in a Jeffersonian sense, we’re in serious trouble.
I would really like your blogged opinion, from the bricked walk ways of Harvard Yard, as to the specifics of why this phenomenon has occurred, the potential effect (I don’t think we’ve experienced that yet), and how as a polity we might address the problem.
February 20th, 2010 | 4:22 pm
Elitism just brought us a smaller output. It didn’t bring us any better output.
We have more crap but we have more gems today.
So yes, we are better informed and better entertained that ever before. There greater access to information and media and greater ability to produce it.
February 20th, 2010 | 11:57 pm
I know you guys are all the smart guys and usins is just a bunch of dummies, but it seems to me that youins have failed to establish your premise which seems like it kinda shoulda be that things were never worse than they are now back when all those white guys were runnin things.
February 21st, 2010 | 10:25 am
@Bob–I wish I knew exactly why the establishment collapsed. Probably a lot of reasons, of which the biggest may have been the democratizing trend introduced by World War II. Also, of course, the revolt of The Youf in the ’60s. One of the big differences between the New Left and liberals who become the original neo-conservatives (whom I admire very much) was that the latter wanted to open up the establishment to talent, the former to destroy it. In any case, it’s gone, and replaced, as you observe, by a cruder, richer, more venal meritocracy. There’s probably not much we can do about this, which is why my feelings about “populism” are so mixed.
@Whipper Snapper–You may be right about the ratio of gems to crap. But would you argue that the general level is higher today?
@Greg–This may not be the kind of premise that can be “established”. As our own Peter Lawler might say, things used to be both better and worse. Better, perhaps, in the spirit of public service or noblesse oblige. Worse in the injustice involved in any stable ruling class.
February 21st, 2010 | 11:38 am
Sam,
So, I’m late in joining this discussion… From a simple (perhaps simplistic) view, my sense is that the nature of the elite shifted in the Progressive Era, and what we got was a transition from Gilded Age elites to the responsible elites of the mid-20th C. What we’ve seen in the last few decades is, as you say, a turnover of power from that old vanguard to a new, shifting elite, with none of the same sense of responsibility. But, if we cover, say, 1880 to 1980, we don’t see a uniform decline in elite responsibility, but rather a bowed curve: gilded elites give way to the progressive era and depression/WWII era elites (who, I agree, were a good lot on the whole!) and then, via deregulation, turnover in the composition of the elite, financialization of the economy, etc., – in short, the current mess. Interestingly, the shifting nature of the elite corresponds to a much stronger grip of elites over general society than earlier – hence, we return to Gilded Age era levels of economic inequality, in contrast to much of the 20th C.
I can think of two general factors at least that might account for these changes. The first is geopolitical: 20th C. elites were hemmed in at home by a strong labor movement and abroad by Cold War geopolitics, and needed to show that the American system produced a better outcome, even for the little guy, than either outright Communism, or all the socialist variants then being tried in Europe, and proposed here. So there was a serious prudential need for constraint, and somehow the elites largely pulled off coordinating that restraint. There’s no such need now. As vulgar and short-sighted as American elites are today, they are examples of virtue and modesty in comparison to the nouveaux riches of the Middle East, Russia, China, and India, alas.
But a second, perhaps even more important shift is generational. If the Gilded Age fortunes represented a disproportionate number of nouveaux riches – eager for more, eager for display, and insecure in their status – then perhaps their children and grandchildren grew up embarrassed by vulgar display, secure in status, and motivated by a broader sense of purpose (since Dad had already made the fortune, but was also a difficult bastard). If this is the case, perhaps we can hope that the children of today’s reckless financiers will want to become decent professionals, mayors, doctors, academics, etc. and imbue those professions with internal codes of conduct that emphasize personal virtue, public good, and non-market discipline.
A final point about the ethnic composition of the elite: the Gilded Age folks were just as WASP as their 20th C. successors; so WASP virtue isn’t necessarily – or just – WASP per se. After all, the mid-20th C. elite had large numbers of German Jews, who worked alongside (and often intermarried) with WASPs, and had the same sense of restraint and public purpose. Of course, in many cases, WASPs and non-WASPs alike were educated at the same boarding schools and elite universities that emphasized a certain esprit de corps and made general abstention a virtue. At elite schools today, of course, the virtue of abstention – of modesty, of holding back, of civility – is largely missing, and students are taught to promote themselves ruthlessly in order to get ahead. Which has, as you say, produced a very different America…
February 22nd, 2010 | 12:39 am
Is it possible that the meritocracy is just badly educated and therefore cannot receive a mandate of heaven? Contrast say the elite education of John Kerry, George Bush or Barak Obama with the high school education of Harry Truman.
February 25th, 2010 | 5:39 pm
Well the thing, samuel goldman, is that deneen is right that we have lost so much and really are on the brink of destruction, especially considering the real fragility of our own “systems” that have brought in general level MUCH greater “gems” and we do have a meritocracy to thank for that. So I understand Deneen’s position to be the best well suited… Maybe it is existential obviously it is quite contrary to reality and also the byproduct of the idea that — I can build this right — through an allowance of consciousness to reign supreme as the greatest human virtues. Though at the same time that seems contradictory as Rous said consciousness was our greatest weakness.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact