There’s an important Angelo Codevilla essay in Forbes: As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned. Not sure if I agree of his analysis of the Republican Party, which is obviously the main point of the essay, but I do agree with his analysis of the Liberal-Ivy Establishment, or really half-establishment, since it rules in open defiance of and contempt towards nearly half of the nation:
“…The Republican Party never fully adapted itself to the fact that modern big government is an interest group in and of itself, inherently at odds with the rest of society…”
“…It is impossible to overstate the importance of American education’s centralization, intellectual homogenization and partisanship in the formation of the ruling class’ leadership. Many have noted the increasing stratification of American society and that, unlike in decades past, entry into its top levels now depends largely on graduation from elite universities. As Charles Murray has noted, their graduates tend to marry one another, perpetuating what they like to call a “meritocracy.” But this is rule not by the meritorious, rather by the merely credentialed – because the credentials are suspect. As Ron Unz has shown, nowadays entry into the ivied gateways to power is by co-option, not merit. Moreover, the amount of study required at these universities leaves their products with more pretense than knowledge or skill.” [links available to the Unz and Murray stuff in the original]
And I must add, the kind of study.
“Thus by the turn of the twenty first century America had a bona fide ruling class that transcends government and sees itself at once as distinct from the rest of society – and as the only element thereof that may act on its behalf. It rules – to use New York Times columnist David Brooks’ characterization of Barack Obama – ‘as a visitor from a morally superior civilization.’ The civilization of the ruling class does not concede that those who resist it have any moral or intellectual right, and only reluctantly any civil right, to do so. Resistance is illegitimate because it can come only from low motives. President Obama’s statement that Republican legislators – and hence the people who elect them – don’t care whether ‘seniors have decent health care…children have enough to eat’ is typical.”
Typical, but let us remind ourselves, sickening. Morally bankrupt. Infected with a spirit productive of civil war.
And most shocking, perhaps, we get this on a near daily basis without any substantial push-back from moderates. The many decently moderate Democrats you meet…nice people, but truth is, especially about the older and more educated ones, they are grossly abdicating their duty to their party’s and their nation’s future health.
I cannot repeat that point enough.
One thing I would say to them, if per chance any of them read this, is that Codevilla’s characterization of an elite liberal ruling class, which feels slightly but significantly off for characterizing the social physiognomy of the whole nation, nearly entirely rings true with what I’ve seen in academia. And it is now quite obviously the truth about the legacy media, aka the MSM.
I won’t go here into Codevilla’s characterizations of a “country class,” excluded both from the liberal-ivy elite and the ever-diminishing but still-tenacious Republican “country-club” club, but you’ll get the basic idea from this:
“The common, unifying element of the several country class’ sectors is the ruling class’ insistence, founded on force rather than reason, that their concerns are illegitimate, that they are illegitimate. The ruling class demonizes the country class piece by piece. Piece by piece it cannot defend itself, much less can it set the country on a course of domestic and international peace, freedom and solvency. None of the country class’ politically active elements can, by themselves, hope to achieve any of their goals because they can be sure that the entire ruling class’ resources will be focused on them whenever circumstances seem propitious. In 2012 for example, the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms seemed politically safe. Then, one disaster brought seemingly endless resources from every corner of the ruling class to bear on its defenders. The rest of the country class’ politically active elements stood by, sympathetically, but without a vehicle for helping. Each of these elements should have learned that none can hope for indulgence from any part of the ruling class. They can look only to others who are under attack as they themselves are.”
So pro-lifers, Porchers, real liberal educators, etc., don’t mock the NRA even as you seek to engage everyone in civil discussions about gun control that tend to arrive at conclusions against the current frenzy of proposals, support it! Don’t do the usual “I agree with 90% of what Rush Limbaugh says, but…” schtick! I actually think it’s more than a schtick, but Codevilla has a point, even if it is not the most important one from the essay anyhow. So let’s give him the last word here:
“Yet the country class, to defend itself, to cut down the forest of subsidies and privileges that choke America, to curb the arrogance of modern government, cannot shy away from offending the ruling class’ intellectual and moral pretenses. Events themselves show how dysfunctional the ruling class is.”
Well, not quite the last word. The silver lining about dysfunctionality is that it brings with it a great deal of ineffectiveness—consider the recent and very thorough Weekly Standard piece on Eric Holder, for example. Awful ideologue with horrible agenda, but he can’t get much of it enacted.
February 22nd, 2013 | 8:25 am
“Typical, but let us remind ourselves, sickening. Morally bankrupt. Infected with a spirit productive of civil war.”
Carl, I do agree yet, somehow, the notion that this statement is emanating from a leading PoMoCon is an indication that we are further down the road than I thought.
‘And most shocking, perhaps, we get this on a near daily basis without any substantial push-back from moderates. The many decently moderate Democrats you meet…nice people, but truth is, especially about the older and more educated ones, they are grossly abdicating their duty to their party’s and their nation’s future health.’
‘I cannot repeat that point enough.’
And, while we may disagree on the question of a ‘moderate’ Democrat that fact is that these people are ALL suffering, in one degree or another, to a perverse and debilitating spiritual disease.
February 22nd, 2013 | 9:11 am
Obama’s quoted statement is “sickening”? I think Pete here has given plenty of good evidence that the GOP needs to deliver a slightly different message about poor seniors and hungry children. I agree that Obama and Holder (ugh) often seem infected with a moral bankruptcy, but so indeed did Bush/Cheney/Rumbaugh, on a truly global scale, and so do Novak and Weigel, say, in these precincts. There’s plenty of moral bankruptcy (accompanied by righteous certitude) to go around in our beloved country these days.
I never made it into the Ivy elite by the way (not that I wanted to, in that sense); I didn’t have the family money or social class to do so. I turned down Princeton’s and MIT’s ‘offers’ because of money concerns (gotta love that equality of opportunity thang we got goin’ here), and attended a small liberal-arts college that is now defunct.
On a brighter note, Carl, check out the new album by Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite. Real American music. Makes me want to pull my old harmonica out of the drawer.
February 22nd, 2013 | 9:23 am
Maybe a bit uneven, but powerful stuff. Angelo is tough!
February 22nd, 2013 | 9:42 am
William Voegeli makes a similar case in a recent Claremont Review of Books. Are we approaching the end of the Old Regime?
February 22nd, 2013 | 9:44 am
Amusingly no one quite represents this undeserved superiority and smugness than fellow Forbes contributor Josh Barro. Honestly this article could be retitled why Josh Barro should shut up.
February 22nd, 2013 | 9:49 am
This article is absolutely brilliant. This part is especially spot-on:
“That is why for example a majority of the Republican Establishment, including The Wall Street Journal and the post-W.F. Buckley National Review supported the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and its premise that big, well-connected enterprises are “too big to fail” – which three fourths of the American people opposed vociferously. For these Republican cognoscenti vox populi is not vox dei, but the voice of idiots. Accordingly, after the 2010 elections produced a large contingent of Senators and Congressmen pledged to oppose measures such as the TARP, former Senate Republican majority leader Trent Lott expressed confidence that Washington would soon break the new members to its ways, that pledges to voters would count for little against the approval or disapproval of prestigious personages, against the profit to be made by going along with the ruling class and the trouble that comes from opposing it.”
Plenty of us didn’t vote for Mitt because of this sort of stuff. And this is why folks end up voting for the Angles and O’Donnells of the world.
“Moderate” Dems are perfectly happy to play along with utterly destroying the GOP. It’s far better to be the minority wing of a majority party than the minority wing of one of two equal parties, after all. The Dems think they are on the verge of accomplishing their goal of turning the nation into California, Illinois, New York. Never mind that these places are economic disasters with fleeing populations–the Dems have complete chokeholds on power there.
The GOP (or some alternative–I don’t much care) needs some “nice” sounding plans to dismantle DC power. Given the jackals and vipers in the MSM these days, it will be tricky to do that. But it will be done soon enough regardless, because current the current government is–what’s the word lefties love so much?–unsustainable.
February 22nd, 2013 | 10:48 am
[...] There’s an important Angelo Codevilla essay in Forbes: As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned. Not sure if I agree of his analysis of the Republican Party, which is obviously the main point of the essay, but I do agree with Source: Postmodern Conservative [...]
February 22nd, 2013 | 11:07 am
Megan McArdle’s post today is also excellent and highly related to this topic.
Like her, by education, resume, etc., I should be totally down with the current system, and I’m doing quite well economically speaking. But there are all sorts of problems with what WE as a society are doing, sustainably, economically, MORALLY. And the ESTABLISHMENT only has ANSWERS that mean “more of the same”, i.e., empowering the establishment. How convenient.
The TEA PARTY isn’t really a THING, but IT (it’s also not an IT, of course, which is both a PROBLEM and OPPORTUNITY) is at least a reflection of the recognition that things are badly off the rails. Unfortunately, that meme is fully associated with anti-Sexual-Revolution “damn the hippies, back to Father Knows Best!” social conservatism and is hence easily discredited/dismissed by the establishment, but that’s not at all the main front of the battle right now.
February 22nd, 2013 | 3:14 pm
The problem here is that Angelo Codevilla logic leads to the delegitimization of the current order one that yell for a call for revolution (ala the DoI). But is mere appeal to political solutions really the answer? Or is Allan Tate ultimately correct–that in killing there is more than commentary.
February 23rd, 2013 | 9:21 pm
[...] wrote a terrific piece about what he called our Liberal-Ivy ruling class and I found this passage from Angelo Codevilla to [...]
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