The Credentialed Gentry and The Unpersuaded Yahoos
October 19, 2010
Elizabeth Scalia
Amid the scores of divisive debates currently roiling America into a giant melting pot o’crazy is the question of whether or not the political and mainstream pundit class is elitist in nature or attitude.
This is not really a new question. Back when Dan Quayle was criticizing sitcom heroine Murphy Brown for promoting single-parenthood in a way that could negatively affect society, he was roundly jeered at for referring to those running most media and most academic institutions as “the cultural elite.”
The accuracy and power of the phrase was demonstrated by the vehement denials that issued from both coasts; the very rich, very insulated people who traveled from Beverly Hills to the Upper West Side to Southampton to Telluride while associating mostly with the like-minded, insisted that there was nothing elitist in their notions or their values. They were just the kinder, gentler part of the nation and the antidote to cruel moralists who would inflict their hang-ups on others, just to keep them down.
In 2005, in a prescient piece, Peggy Noonan identified the elites and seemed to read their minds: “Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us,” she wrote.
I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense . . . that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they’re living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas. . . “I got mine, you get yours.”
Senator or editor or lawyer, they were making their lives “a little fortress.”
Lately, the elitist notion has turned into a hardy grapple between the mainstream and alternative punditries. The mainstream, in a tacit admission that they are elitist, sniff “What’s the matter with elitism?” and—in a staggering display of distortive spinmanship—chide their lessers as being “anti-education.”
The alternative crew volleys between amusement and disdain while wondering whether the ignoble “elite”—who seem “educated” but not particularly smart—should more properly be referred to as the “credentialed gentry.”
Elites or gentry, the people who described the electorate as “ineducable” in 2004 but “enlightened” in 2008 are running out of big words with which to condemn their unpersuaded lessers, and so for 2010 they are falling back on calling them “yahoos” and referring to their non-elite preferred candidates as “crazy” or “dumb.” If the preferred candidate is a female, the credentialed gentry—including their liberated women—feel no compunction in labeling her as “crazy,” “dumb”, “mean,” or even “a whore.”
Is there an elite class in America, and if yes, what renders it so? Is it mere money or Ivy League polish? Is it because they have great social and political connections and what we used to refer to as their “rolodex”? Is it education? Social skills? Empathy? Enlightenment? Or does one become elite simply by dint of one’s ability to sustain an illusion—to fool oneself and others—that one is a counter-cultural egalitarian, while living what formerly would have been thought a country-club life?
Every Sunday I meander through the New York Times like a mildly ADHD-afflicted canine in Central Park, who moves excitedly from plant to tree to park bench because there is just so much to sniff.
And every Sunday I finally close the paper and think, this is a publication which editorializes on the evils of capitalism, praises European-style socialism, and so disdains middle-class folk like me and my family that—were it not for our subscription—we would not exist in their awareness. It showcases a weekly hardship-story or two but is otherwise chock-full of people so rich I have never heard of them, people who breathe rarefied air and move their conclaves between Town and Country, between Sotheby’s Manhattan and Sotheby’s Southampton, so to speak.
The paper serves these pretend-egalitarian school-choice opponents, who send their own children to private schools—the folks who cry “racism” at Arizona but would likely never encounter a working-class immigrant or have one on their property, illegal or otherwise, except to erect the extra-high walls around their fortresses, or cook their meals, or stain their decks.
The New York Times postures. A powerful corporate entity that is part of the firmly-entrenched cultural establishment, it fancies itself the radical student-idealist speaking smack to the man, and that cognitive dissonance clangs and reverberates amid those who aspire to live the lifestyle it promotes, and it helps them to live the illusion that their gentrified lives are somehow part of an ongoing struggle.
And maybe that is what defines an elite: the lip-curled reproach to anything that has come before this privileged and smug generation—tradition, faith, heroic self-denial—and the illusion that their disdain is somehow a broader and more enlightened “love.”
For the most part, the “yahoo” non-elites do not begrudge the gentry their private jets, their private clubs, and their private schools. They do, however, begrudge them the superior dismissal of their values, and the constant attempts to control how others get to live their lives.
The ineducable masses begrudge the hectoring about their taste for “gas guzzlers,” from people who ride in limos. They dislike being dismissed as “provincial” or “parochial” by people who only associate with others of the same neighborhood and mindset. They are weary of being portrayed as less compassionate, less well-meaning, gosh darn it just lesser people because they believe in giving an equal-opportunity hand-up, rather than an impossible-to-sustain equal-hand-out.
The elites don’t want to be called “elite.” But they reinforce the perception with every tax-shelter they pursue, every privilege they grasp, every tax bill they can’t be bothered to pay until they’re forced to, and when they pretend that middle-class wages are undertaxed, greedy, ignoble, selfish, and unfair.
Peggy Noonan had it right. The Don’t-Call-Us-Elites-You-Low-Class-Wretches types accrued wealth and power over the last three decades, and used them in pursuit of a deconstruction that would “remake” America into a socialist state, They’ve come so near their goal, too, in the last two years; they’d hoped to put into place a façade of “equality” that would make them the most equal of all.
Which is why they’ve been building fortresses. Castro lives in one, too.
Elizabeth Scalia is a contributing writer for First Things. She blogs at The Anchoress.
Comments:
10.19.2010 | 3:39am
Jeff Whittington says:
Exactly. "Elites" are people who advocate policies that might adversely affect the profits of the oil companies. Unimaginable willful ignorance is a virtue so long as it continues to fill the coffers of the already-incredibly-wealthy at the expense of everybody else.
All I can say, Ms Scalia, is every night I get on my knees and solemnly pray that there is a hell.
All I can say, Ms Scalia, is every night I get on my knees and solemnly pray that there is a hell.
10.19.2010 | 7:05am
John Q. Public says:
The elite are parasites. They have titles proclaiming their ignorance. The welfare state is a creature of the elites to transfer money from the productive to the non-productive. It transfers power from politically weak to the politically strong, and provides cover for the religious tax-exempt, church-civil government alliance.
You can identify the elite religious class by the grunts of piety coming from their pulpit. Charity consists of pamphlets directing the flock to the community welfare office. The parasite church is a product of the bar association and their alliances with the welfare state.
Their entire economic model is a house of cards, a Keynesian house of fiat money.
Unfortunately for society, many good people have been led away from Christ by this phony religion. Universal mandatory education accellerated the ignorance of the people and provided cover for the parasite class. This model of mobacracy is about to crumble. The elite are desperately establishing a police state in hopes of protecting their property, food production facilities and distribution centers. There is a camera on every lamp post.
This could get interesting when the world demands their payback for the phony money we print. I see a repeat of the French Revolution, and the strong possibility that the elite may see this too and poison the water and air to save their neck. I hope to take the church buildings, burned in anger by the people they abused and shunned away with their elitist power religion, and pick through the rubble, and rotting flesh for a place to rebuild.
You can identify the elite religious class by the grunts of piety coming from their pulpit. Charity consists of pamphlets directing the flock to the community welfare office. The parasite church is a product of the bar association and their alliances with the welfare state.
Their entire economic model is a house of cards, a Keynesian house of fiat money.
Unfortunately for society, many good people have been led away from Christ by this phony religion. Universal mandatory education accellerated the ignorance of the people and provided cover for the parasite class. This model of mobacracy is about to crumble. The elite are desperately establishing a police state in hopes of protecting their property, food production facilities and distribution centers. There is a camera on every lamp post.
This could get interesting when the world demands their payback for the phony money we print. I see a repeat of the French Revolution, and the strong possibility that the elite may see this too and poison the water and air to save their neck. I hope to take the church buildings, burned in anger by the people they abused and shunned away with their elitist power religion, and pick through the rubble, and rotting flesh for a place to rebuild.
10.19.2010 | 9:53am
Sissy Willis says:
It's all about "feeling good about themselves," unintended consequences be damned!
10.19.2010 | 9:53am
Bangwell Putt says:
THe second and third comments on this piece provide, in my opinion, evidence that only sober, reasoned discourse should be offered by those who are neither "gentry" nor "yahoos" - the center, right and left, within which any hope of peace resides. Witty, sharply phrased articles are more entertaining and make their point, but they seem to elicit extreme responses. One case in point is the reference to "oil companies". These companies produce a source of energy while providing large numbers of people with good jobs. They pay enormous sums in taxes. That those who operate them may be principled people of good will or profit-centered, selfish individuals - in other words, the same types and the same distribution we find engaged in government, academics, other commercial enterprises, even those who claim the title of religion - is true. But it is also true that "scapegoating", setting up one group (whether religious, political, or commercial) as the cause of all evil, has throughout history caused horrific suffering, both for those who are its victims and, somewhat later, those who were its perpetrators.
10.19.2010 | 10:21am
MaxMBJ says:
Really, it all comes down to hypocrisy. The elites are the Pharisees that Jesus railed against, the phonies that Holden Caulfield found all around him. Every generation, every culture, produces its own brand of such folks, but at the core they are always the same person: a hypocrite.
10.19.2010 | 10:23am
joe bissonnette says:
The money quote from Peggy Noonan is much amplified on in Christopher Lasche's book The Revolt of the Elites. He laments the decline of nobless oblige via the outsourcing to low-cost labour countries. While that's yesterday's story it does point to an important premise not acknowledged in this piece; the elites we will always have with us.
From student government on up there are those who are brighter and work harder, or inherit the fruits of those who were or did. And like seeks like, thereby forming a class.
Elites are a perpetual problem. Their presumption and condescension grates and their idle detachment easily twists and perverts in ways the grounded middle class cannot. But we should not give way to envy.
From student government on up there are those who are brighter and work harder, or inherit the fruits of those who were or did. And like seeks like, thereby forming a class.
Elites are a perpetual problem. Their presumption and condescension grates and their idle detachment easily twists and perverts in ways the grounded middle class cannot. But we should not give way to envy.
10.19.2010 | 10:25am
Nora says:
I come from exactly the sort of folks the NYTimes panders to -- elitist, condescending, selfish to the core -- I don't know how my mother put up with my father's family for as long as she did (not very long, actually -- she died in her early 50s).
For all their posturing and for all their self-congratulatory snobbery, the truth is they're the least democratic people on the planet -- they don't want other people to have what they have. It's just no fun having all those degrees and all that money and those great properties, etc., if there's an ice cube's chance in hell the great unwashed masses might ever achieve those things too.
They are racist beyond belief -- all in the guise of something they call "compassion", but which isn't really compassion at all. They are closed minded and sneering, and just aren't happy unless they have people they can look down upon.
Their greatest sin? They are completely humorless. Completely.
Interesting letters to the editor re the Times Magazine piece on Glenn Beck (not that I'm a big Glenn Beck fan) -- one man sneered at Beck and Hannity for not being educated because they hadn't completed their college degrees. Dude's totally confusing "educated" with "credentialed". Not the same thing. But the letter spoke volumes -- these things they have -- degrees, money, summer homes -- are where it all begins and ends for these folks. Actually thinking, doing, believing, not so much.
For all their posturing and for all their self-congratulatory snobbery, the truth is they're the least democratic people on the planet -- they don't want other people to have what they have. It's just no fun having all those degrees and all that money and those great properties, etc., if there's an ice cube's chance in hell the great unwashed masses might ever achieve those things too.
They are racist beyond belief -- all in the guise of something they call "compassion", but which isn't really compassion at all. They are closed minded and sneering, and just aren't happy unless they have people they can look down upon.
Their greatest sin? They are completely humorless. Completely.
Interesting letters to the editor re the Times Magazine piece on Glenn Beck (not that I'm a big Glenn Beck fan) -- one man sneered at Beck and Hannity for not being educated because they hadn't completed their college degrees. Dude's totally confusing "educated" with "credentialed". Not the same thing. But the letter spoke volumes -- these things they have -- degrees, money, summer homes -- are where it all begins and ends for these folks. Actually thinking, doing, believing, not so much.
10.19.2010 | 10:34am
Chipper says:
Make no mistake. Peggy Noonan is, quite happily, one of the 'elites'. These days she is correct about as often as she is wrong. As Tom Smith wrote at rightcoast, Peggy is "...a pompous, posing RINO who wishes she were Pamela Harriman and isn't."
10.19.2010 | 10:42am
Mike_K says:
Charles Murray, in The Bell Curve, was worried about a cultural elite created by the Ivy League colleges acceptance of women. He thought that the high IQ men, who had formerly married women from their acquaintance with average intelligence, would now most likely marry other high IQ women and an elite of super intelligent would form. He worried about the effect of this on society. I don't think he anticipated that the degradation of Ivy League education by political correctness, grade inflation and affirmative action would cancel the IQ effect and lead to a cultural elite of such ignorance. Unfortunately, at the moment, we are ruled by such people although the exposure of their incompetence may have salutary effects later on.
10.19.2010 | 11:10am
Banjo says:
Elizabeth Scalia: A very nice piece, but if you don't learn your place, surely someone will show you to it. As for the rough handling hypocrisy gets nowadays, people should remember it is the homage vice pays to virtue. There are far worse things, such as a president believing those who disagree with him are ignorant, fearful, racist clingers to a discredited past.
10.19.2010 | 11:37am
Paul from Hamburg says:
Very nice. The phrase "credentialed gentry" captures the situation nicely. Far from being truly educated, this group is so devoid of actual, original thoughts, they are almost paralyzed when a new idea comes along. The reaction of the CG crowd to the tea parties and Sarah Palin is a clear example this. The legitimate liberal response to the tea party movement should have been "This is good. We live in a democracy and people are participating." Pro-diversity, pro-woman liberals should have had at least a few kind words for Sarah Palin. Instead, when something new comes along that doesn't fit into their paradigm and they simply attack it.
10.19.2010 | 11:41am
david nuelle says:
Most "on" thing I've read from Elizabeth Scalia. Re-read John Q.Public.
He is also the most "on" of the comments.
He is also the most "on" of the comments.
10.19.2010 | 11:46am
J says:
"Elites" are people who advocate policies that might adversely affect the profits of the oil companies"
I don't understand the hostility towards oil companies. They've done a hell of a lot more to improve mankind's lot than any newspaper or environmental organization (or most other institutions for that matter) has.
"Academia, for example, is a magnet for strivers. People see it as place of respectable employment and a bastion of correct thinking"
I agree to some extent, but I'd argue it's a magnet for strivers who, ironically, aren't very smart. Respect for academia and the credentials it confers has plummetted in my lifetime, and if anything accelerated in the last decade or so. A big part of that has, IMV, been an unhealthy focus on credentials, resulting in an explosive increase in university degrees nobody outside the academic environment takes seriously - particularly at the graduate level.
"All I can say, Ms Scalia, is every night I get on my knees and solemnly pray that there is a hell"
Be careful what you wish for.
I don't understand the hostility towards oil companies. They've done a hell of a lot more to improve mankind's lot than any newspaper or environmental organization (or most other institutions for that matter) has.
"Academia, for example, is a magnet for strivers. People see it as place of respectable employment and a bastion of correct thinking"
I agree to some extent, but I'd argue it's a magnet for strivers who, ironically, aren't very smart. Respect for academia and the credentials it confers has plummetted in my lifetime, and if anything accelerated in the last decade or so. A big part of that has, IMV, been an unhealthy focus on credentials, resulting in an explosive increase in university degrees nobody outside the academic environment takes seriously - particularly at the graduate level.
"All I can say, Ms Scalia, is every night I get on my knees and solemnly pray that there is a hell"
Be careful what you wish for.
10.19.2010 | 11:47am
Mark in Texas says:
I don't believe that there was ever a golden age of meritocracy but I do believe that our current crop of credentialed gentry have degenerated from elite to eloi.
10.19.2010 | 11:53am
Bohemond says:
Well, taken, Elizabeth; however, I think you cast your net too narrowly in identifying the courtiers of the New Versailles as being limited to the supperrich of Beverly Hills and the Upper East Side. The vast majority of them fit into the middle class, or at least its white-collar end, and are especially thick on the ground in the DC suburbs although they can be found nearly anywhere government jobs are plentiful.
While limousine liberals are indeed a plague upon the people, they would be little threat by themselves, and their contempt for the plebeians merely quaint, were they not reinforced by legions of university products who never managed to grow up, and cling (bitterly at present) to their dream of a Never-Neverland of entitlement without responsibility, and who regard any outside their set and mindset in the same way they viewed "townies" when they were in school: slack-jawed yokels.
While limousine liberals are indeed a plague upon the people, they would be little threat by themselves, and their contempt for the plebeians merely quaint, were they not reinforced by legions of university products who never managed to grow up, and cling (bitterly at present) to their dream of a Never-Neverland of entitlement without responsibility, and who regard any outside their set and mindset in the same way they viewed "townies" when they were in school: slack-jawed yokels.
10.19.2010 | 11:55am
Nora says:
@Mike_K
You make it sound like smart men ought to marry dumb women, although that usually manifests as wealthy men marrying string of young bimbos, each replaced by a fresh model every couple of years. Not such a great plan, either.
It's not that the women men of previous generartions married were, well, the downstairs maids (not that there's anything wrong with that -- my great grandmother arrived in this country at the age of 16 and had a job as a housemaid within a week of disembarking), or something, but that women then tempered the intellectualism of the Ivy League education with faith, practicality and, well, children/responsibility.
Educated men married the daughters of other educated men. While those women may not have had the opportunity to pursue degrees, they were probably more educated than the women of the working classes.
I don't think the difference is an education based one, but rather one of values, of priorities. What happened was the degrees became the thing -- these Ivy League couples became little degree mills in their own right -- if they had children at all, those children had to reflect their parents' Ivy image, and so on.
And I think we have moved on from IQ along as the sole indicator of intelligence. Yes, high-IQ people tend to marry each other, but, believe me, sometimes they have real trainwrecks of kids.
IQ is as IQ does...same goes for credentials...
You make it sound like smart men ought to marry dumb women, although that usually manifests as wealthy men marrying string of young bimbos, each replaced by a fresh model every couple of years. Not such a great plan, either.
It's not that the women men of previous generartions married were, well, the downstairs maids (not that there's anything wrong with that -- my great grandmother arrived in this country at the age of 16 and had a job as a housemaid within a week of disembarking), or something, but that women then tempered the intellectualism of the Ivy League education with faith, practicality and, well, children/responsibility.
Educated men married the daughters of other educated men. While those women may not have had the opportunity to pursue degrees, they were probably more educated than the women of the working classes.
I don't think the difference is an education based one, but rather one of values, of priorities. What happened was the degrees became the thing -- these Ivy League couples became little degree mills in their own right -- if they had children at all, those children had to reflect their parents' Ivy image, and so on.
And I think we have moved on from IQ along as the sole indicator of intelligence. Yes, high-IQ people tend to marry each other, but, believe me, sometimes they have real trainwrecks of kids.
IQ is as IQ does...same goes for credentials...
10.19.2010 | 12:10pm
cricket says:
I think you're all being kind of harsh. Some of my best friends are elites.
10.19.2010 | 12:13pm
Joseph says:
May I suggest two essays that may help to explore the topics raised. Several decades ago Andrew Greeley wrote a very good essay on the sense of self-identity, "Intellectuals as an Ethnic Group" collected in his book Why Can't They Be Like Us? He includes a good discussion of the intellectuals' sense of being misunderstood by outsiders. Bernard Bailyn's introductory essay in To Build the World Anew discusses the founding fathers and what he calls "the creative imagination." He brilliantly assesses the value of provincial status as a precondition for the accomplishments of the founders: they were rooted in reality when the elites had wandered into decadence. I suspect that both authors identify with contemporary elites, but their work sheds light on today's debates.
10.19.2010 | 12:15pm
tim maguire says:
You are right on in your analysis of the New York Times. It's primary purpose is to reassure the liberal elite that they can have their jet-set lifestyles and still be environmentalists, they can maintain their privileged pampered lifestyles free of the guilt because they hold all the right opinions.
As for the elites educated but not smart, I am reminded of the panel of prominent historians who declared George Bush would be remembered as one of our country's worst presidents. They then went on to give a list of reasons, like the deficit, that history has never cared about. You'd think historians could look beyond their partisanship long enough to notice the trends of their own field of study.
When I say "I am reminded," I mean I was recently reminded by a book review in the SUnday Tomes book section, written by a historian, about three books on the Tea Parties. Among other things, this historian said it makes no sense to blame Obama now for the deficits when the deficits were caused by the Reagan and Bush tax cuts. It was set forth as a plain assertion of fact, as though completely uncontroversial. Even if a historian is not an economist, you would expect him to know that deficits are made by spending more than is taken in--so there are two sides to the equation and a reasonable person might want to take a look at that other side.
As for the elites educated but not smart, I am reminded of the panel of prominent historians who declared George Bush would be remembered as one of our country's worst presidents. They then went on to give a list of reasons, like the deficit, that history has never cared about. You'd think historians could look beyond their partisanship long enough to notice the trends of their own field of study.
When I say "I am reminded," I mean I was recently reminded by a book review in the SUnday Tomes book section, written by a historian, about three books on the Tea Parties. Among other things, this historian said it makes no sense to blame Obama now for the deficits when the deficits were caused by the Reagan and Bush tax cuts. It was set forth as a plain assertion of fact, as though completely uncontroversial. Even if a historian is not an economist, you would expect him to know that deficits are made by spending more than is taken in--so there are two sides to the equation and a reasonable person might want to take a look at that other side.
10.19.2010 | 12:30pm
Richard says:
Turned on Fox News recently and heard the word "elite" several times in a very short time span. Clearly this article addresses a phenomenon much on the minds of many and in fact the evidence is strong that Roger Aisles runs Fox News as a form of vengeance attack on traditionally perceived Liberal, elite media such as the NYT.
I suppose there is truth to some of the points made here. It has been that way for a long time. The problem as I see it is that the real elites, the honchos at the big pharma companies, the big insurance companies and such are using this basic argument to further their agenda which is turning this country into a plutocracy. The hell with the "socialist" notions so common from the right.
Just like the moral positions utilized by many in power to gain power, fanning the flames of resentment of the unwashed toward the "elites" is a way for those really pulling the strings to maintain and increase their power, wealth and influence. These are not Harvard professors, these are the folks you don't read about often like the big shots at State Farm.
And when she was asked to define who the "elites" really were, Sarah Palin was unable to come up with a coherent answer.
I suppose there is truth to some of the points made here. It has been that way for a long time. The problem as I see it is that the real elites, the honchos at the big pharma companies, the big insurance companies and such are using this basic argument to further their agenda which is turning this country into a plutocracy. The hell with the "socialist" notions so common from the right.
Just like the moral positions utilized by many in power to gain power, fanning the flames of resentment of the unwashed toward the "elites" is a way for those really pulling the strings to maintain and increase their power, wealth and influence. These are not Harvard professors, these are the folks you don't read about often like the big shots at State Farm.
And when she was asked to define who the "elites" really were, Sarah Palin was unable to come up with a coherent answer.
10.19.2010 | 12:31pm
reheiler says:
@Jeff Whittington, who wrote (among other things):
"All I can say, Ms Scalia, is every night I get on my knees and solemnly pray that there is a hell."
While praying in particular, it is wise to heed the admonition, "Be carefly what you ask for. You might get it."
"All I can say, Ms Scalia, is every night I get on my knees and solemnly pray that there is a hell."
While praying in particular, it is wise to heed the admonition, "Be carefly what you ask for. You might get it."
10.19.2010 | 12:31pm
Brettongarcia says:
Keep in mind, there is a kind of lower-class snobbery and elitism too. Which says that the common working man is a bastion of good common sense, vs. "pencil-neck" intellectuals and so forth.
There is a lower-class elitism too. And it is this lower-class elitism, that is the essence and mainspring of the neo-con movement.
Is lower-class elitism good? No doubt, the lower class knows some things the other classes don't. But are the virtues of the lower class all that great? What happens, when those who were not smart enough to make it in school/college, run things? When love of guns and football and Hollywood, runs the show?
Think of Animal Farm; think of 1984. What happens when the "Deltas" or the "Epsilons" convince everyone, that they themselves are the only people that really know reality; and that being smart is bad?
There is a lower-class elitism too. And it is this lower-class elitism, that is the essence and mainspring of the neo-con movement.
Is lower-class elitism good? No doubt, the lower class knows some things the other classes don't. But are the virtues of the lower class all that great? What happens, when those who were not smart enough to make it in school/college, run things? When love of guns and football and Hollywood, runs the show?
Think of Animal Farm; think of 1984. What happens when the "Deltas" or the "Epsilons" convince everyone, that they themselves are the only people that really know reality; and that being smart is bad?
10.19.2010 | 12:48pm
marty says:
Suggest you look at "The Revolt of the Elites" by Christopher Lasch. About 15 year old but parts are fresher than your Sunday fish-wrap, er... NYT.
I wish we could call these types "the establishment." IMHO it's better than "elite" because "elite" has the connotation they actually are superior in some sense. And, as their self image was formed in the 1960s and 1970s when the felt they were opposing "the establishment" of the day, it would make 'em squirm a bit.
I wish we could call these types "the establishment." IMHO it's better than "elite" because "elite" has the connotation they actually are superior in some sense. And, as their self image was formed in the 1960s and 1970s when the felt they were opposing "the establishment" of the day, it would make 'em squirm a bit.
10.19.2010 | 12:58pm
Michael says:
Scalia’s article is little more than an exercise in name calling. She calls the people she doesn’t like “elitist” and calls the people she likes “middle-class folk.”
She then draws on old, fuzzy with mold, caricatures. She describes “the very rich, very insulated people who traveled from Beverly Hills to the Upper West Side to Southampton to Telluride while associating mostly with the like-minded” who insist “that there was nothing elitist in their notions or their values.”
I would like to know who she’s talking about. Does she have in mind some particular person who travels in this way, or is she just indulging in stereotype? Has she read some interview? Or does she just like to make up things?
The only person she quotes is Noonan, and she only quotes her because she likes her. There’s no intelligent argument here. Just name calling.
The odd thing is that Scalia begins her descent into name calling by bemoaning the “giant melting pot o’crazy” America has become. So I really don’t know why she would want to make things worse rather than better.
But she does make things worse. So many other commenters join her in her self-congratulation that she is one of the well-grounded “folk” who actually knows how reality works.
Scalia ends by listing the kinds of political policies she likes and those she doesn’t. She doesn’t like “constant attempts to control how others get to live their lives,” she likes “gas guzzlers,” and she believes “in giving an equal-opportunity hand-up, rather than an impossible-to-sustain equal-hand-out.”
Of course, these aren’t actual political stands. They are catchy political slogans, which means they have little substance behind them. Many liberals will tell you that welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are attempts to give the poor more “control” their lives, not less. They will argue that the social safety net does indeed provide a “hand up,” not a “hand out.”
But happily, you don’t have to take these arguments seriously enough to examine the evidence of their success or failure. Why? Because you are salt of the earth “folk,” not some latte-sipping elitist.
Scalia reads the New York Times and can’t believe that so many educated people disagree with her political, social, and religious stands. So she figures that Times readers must be elitist, out of touch, and hypocritical.
There is, of course, another possibility. Maybe some people have thought about the issues deeply and reached different conclusions. Their education and deep thinking doesn’t mean they are right, but their conclusions don’t mean that they are somehow elitist hypocrites.
Scalia could help the debate by not resorting to name calling and by engaging instead the actual issues.
She then draws on old, fuzzy with mold, caricatures. She describes “the very rich, very insulated people who traveled from Beverly Hills to the Upper West Side to Southampton to Telluride while associating mostly with the like-minded” who insist “that there was nothing elitist in their notions or their values.”
I would like to know who she’s talking about. Does she have in mind some particular person who travels in this way, or is she just indulging in stereotype? Has she read some interview? Or does she just like to make up things?
The only person she quotes is Noonan, and she only quotes her because she likes her. There’s no intelligent argument here. Just name calling.
The odd thing is that Scalia begins her descent into name calling by bemoaning the “giant melting pot o’crazy” America has become. So I really don’t know why she would want to make things worse rather than better.
But she does make things worse. So many other commenters join her in her self-congratulation that she is one of the well-grounded “folk” who actually knows how reality works.
Scalia ends by listing the kinds of political policies she likes and those she doesn’t. She doesn’t like “constant attempts to control how others get to live their lives,” she likes “gas guzzlers,” and she believes “in giving an equal-opportunity hand-up, rather than an impossible-to-sustain equal-hand-out.”
Of course, these aren’t actual political stands. They are catchy political slogans, which means they have little substance behind them. Many liberals will tell you that welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are attempts to give the poor more “control” their lives, not less. They will argue that the social safety net does indeed provide a “hand up,” not a “hand out.”
But happily, you don’t have to take these arguments seriously enough to examine the evidence of their success or failure. Why? Because you are salt of the earth “folk,” not some latte-sipping elitist.
Scalia reads the New York Times and can’t believe that so many educated people disagree with her political, social, and religious stands. So she figures that Times readers must be elitist, out of touch, and hypocritical.
There is, of course, another possibility. Maybe some people have thought about the issues deeply and reached different conclusions. Their education and deep thinking doesn’t mean they are right, but their conclusions don’t mean that they are somehow elitist hypocrites.
Scalia could help the debate by not resorting to name calling and by engaging instead the actual issues.
10.19.2010 | 12:59pm
Don says:
Chipper @ 7:34am: Agree 100%. If Peg isn't an "elite", I don't know who or what is. Ms. Scalia uses a quote of PN from 2005, but in more recent years PN has "made a separate peace. [She's] living [her] life and taking [her] pleasures and pursuing [her] agendas. . . 'I got mine, you get yours'.”
10.19.2010 | 1:22pm
Gil Costello says:
The elites of today were schooled in a network of information that grew out of the work of three genius atheists: Freud, Nietzsche and Marx. Wilhelm Reich synthesized the three in the 1930s and established an overall agenda: overcome all authority, internal and external (especially religion), but most importantly the internal, and most especially through sexual liberation, which was the birth of the ascendant elite properly called the "therapeutic" by Philip Rieff in his masterwork, "The Triumph of the Therapeutic".
The power to do all this comes from money: money to get therapeuticized and to purchase an education that situates you in bureaucratic positions of power where you can force your ideas of freedom on people, especially on the young through education, and through the courts in battling the majority who are viewed as hopelessly repressed plebeians.
The elites have won the war: they are firmly established and rule mostly through media, academia, the arts and the courts, successfully imposing every agenda they set out to accomplish, and there is no end in sight. And they simultaneously ignore the results of their success: a widespread radical individualism which is the birth of a new barbarism that makes every discourteousness in public a badge of honor, of not being a part of those repressed moralists dominated by religious ideas of propriety, taking pride, for example, in not giving one's seat on public transportation to the elderly, disabled and women with children. And there is of course the liberated youth who are being afflicted with innumerable STDs, abortion and failed relationships that leave them no choice but to live "safe" lives on a sterile, clinical format called the internet, venturing out occasionally to experience once again, so as to be reminded of, the new barbarism that dominates relationships, although dressed in a kinder, gentler sado-masochism.
The best cinematic image of the modern elitist is in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, "A Clockwork Orange", where the archetypal elitist, nearing old age but learned, has built himself a castle that protects him and his young wife from the widespread ravages of barbarism his philosophical/political outlook helped create, and how his archetypal creation, his monster, shows up on his doorstep, and how that encounter with his own creation will transform him in the end.
The power to do all this comes from money: money to get therapeuticized and to purchase an education that situates you in bureaucratic positions of power where you can force your ideas of freedom on people, especially on the young through education, and through the courts in battling the majority who are viewed as hopelessly repressed plebeians.
The elites have won the war: they are firmly established and rule mostly through media, academia, the arts and the courts, successfully imposing every agenda they set out to accomplish, and there is no end in sight. And they simultaneously ignore the results of their success: a widespread radical individualism which is the birth of a new barbarism that makes every discourteousness in public a badge of honor, of not being a part of those repressed moralists dominated by religious ideas of propriety, taking pride, for example, in not giving one's seat on public transportation to the elderly, disabled and women with children. And there is of course the liberated youth who are being afflicted with innumerable STDs, abortion and failed relationships that leave them no choice but to live "safe" lives on a sterile, clinical format called the internet, venturing out occasionally to experience once again, so as to be reminded of, the new barbarism that dominates relationships, although dressed in a kinder, gentler sado-masochism.
The best cinematic image of the modern elitist is in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, "A Clockwork Orange", where the archetypal elitist, nearing old age but learned, has built himself a castle that protects him and his young wife from the widespread ravages of barbarism his philosophical/political outlook helped create, and how his archetypal creation, his monster, shows up on his doorstep, and how that encounter with his own creation will transform him in the end.
10.19.2010 | 1:22pm
dicentra says:
"Scalia’s article is little more than an exercise in name calling. She calls the people she doesn’t like 'elitist' and calls the people she likes 'middle-class folk.'...I would like to know who she’s talking about. Does she have in mind some particular person who travels in this way, or is she just indulging in stereotype? Has she read some interview? Or does she just like to make up things?"
There's more to the article than merely "calling names," and indulging in stereotype, and I'm sorry you were unable to see it. Elizabeth is describing a phenomenon that I've witnessed for myself: the tendency of certain people--who arise IN EVERY ADVANCED SOCIETY--to separate themselves from "the commoners," congratulate themselves for their moral and intellectual superiority, and then endeavor to impose their "enlightened ways" on the rest of the population.
What do you think the European nobility was? Were they actually superior to the peasantry, or did their ancestors merely luck into land ownership, and because of their wealth, were able to obtain education and then codify mannerisms, speech, behavior, and dress, to set themselves apart from the grubby peons?
I have myself heard, with my own ears, the scorn and ridicule that is heaped upon people who are too unsophisticated to know not to shop at WalMart or listen to country music, who are mere "sheeple" that don't know enough to vote their own interests (as defined by their "betters"), who are too "tacky" to be taken seriously.
I heard it at Ivy-League universities, I heard it at work, and when I was young, I heard it from my own mouth, before I learned that my intellectual gifts are only one gift among many, and that other people have gifts that the world doesn't recognize but that are of infinite value.
Michael, your analysis is well written in its way but the intellectual content is no deeper than the papers I corrected for my freshman writing seminar at Cornell.
"I think you're all being kind of harsh. Some of my best friends are elites."
You misunderstand. An "elite" properly defined is a person who is at the top of their profession or field. There is nothing wrong with excellence, and excellence is NOT being criticized here.
The problem is not "rich people," either; it's an aristocratic attitude among some who see themselves as elite merely because they jumped through some academic hoops--or worse, because they can affect the right attitude.
Like I said: every society has its self-styled aristocrats and wannabe ruling class. If they're not the readers of the NYT (which congratulates them at every turn for being smart enough to not be "one of THEM"), then who are they?
Joe the Plumber? Sarah Palin? Glenn Beck?
There's more to the article than merely "calling names," and indulging in stereotype, and I'm sorry you were unable to see it. Elizabeth is describing a phenomenon that I've witnessed for myself: the tendency of certain people--who arise IN EVERY ADVANCED SOCIETY--to separate themselves from "the commoners," congratulate themselves for their moral and intellectual superiority, and then endeavor to impose their "enlightened ways" on the rest of the population.
What do you think the European nobility was? Were they actually superior to the peasantry, or did their ancestors merely luck into land ownership, and because of their wealth, were able to obtain education and then codify mannerisms, speech, behavior, and dress, to set themselves apart from the grubby peons?
I have myself heard, with my own ears, the scorn and ridicule that is heaped upon people who are too unsophisticated to know not to shop at WalMart or listen to country music, who are mere "sheeple" that don't know enough to vote their own interests (as defined by their "betters"), who are too "tacky" to be taken seriously.
I heard it at Ivy-League universities, I heard it at work, and when I was young, I heard it from my own mouth, before I learned that my intellectual gifts are only one gift among many, and that other people have gifts that the world doesn't recognize but that are of infinite value.
Michael, your analysis is well written in its way but the intellectual content is no deeper than the papers I corrected for my freshman writing seminar at Cornell.
"I think you're all being kind of harsh. Some of my best friends are elites."
You misunderstand. An "elite" properly defined is a person who is at the top of their profession or field. There is nothing wrong with excellence, and excellence is NOT being criticized here.
The problem is not "rich people," either; it's an aristocratic attitude among some who see themselves as elite merely because they jumped through some academic hoops--or worse, because they can affect the right attitude.
Like I said: every society has its self-styled aristocrats and wannabe ruling class. If they're not the readers of the NYT (which congratulates them at every turn for being smart enough to not be "one of THEM"), then who are they?
Joe the Plumber? Sarah Palin? Glenn Beck?
10.19.2010 | 1:26pm
Greg Marquez says:
I think it's a mistake to assume that "elitism" only afflicts the left. I know some of the writers at National Review, for example, very much believe that I.Q. elites should rule.
The issue, I believe, is better labeled, not elitism, but "Inner-Ring-ism," i.e. the desire to be considered one of the chosen, the select, the insiders and that is a vice which afflicts both right and left, Christian and atheist, plutocrat and plebeian. ( C.S. Lewis, a man excluded from inner rings for most of his life, gave a wonderful commencement address on that subject, available here: http://www.lewissociety.org/innerring.php ) That Señora Anchoress quotes Peggy Noonan, of all people, is, I believe, symptomatic of this disease, as is the defense of Arizona's immigration law, which is, by definition, all about maintaining inner and outer rings.
Inner-ring-ism only becomes a problem when those inside the ring have the ability to impose their notions on the rest of humanity. Whether that power come from government or from riches, it is something that should be opposed.
The issue, I believe, is better labeled, not elitism, but "Inner-Ring-ism," i.e. the desire to be considered one of the chosen, the select, the insiders and that is a vice which afflicts both right and left, Christian and atheist, plutocrat and plebeian. ( C.S. Lewis, a man excluded from inner rings for most of his life, gave a wonderful commencement address on that subject, available here: http://www.lewissociety.org/innerring.php ) That Señora Anchoress quotes Peggy Noonan, of all people, is, I believe, symptomatic of this disease, as is the defense of Arizona's immigration law, which is, by definition, all about maintaining inner and outer rings.
Inner-ring-ism only becomes a problem when those inside the ring have the ability to impose their notions on the rest of humanity. Whether that power come from government or from riches, it is something that should be opposed.
10.19.2010 | 1:47pm
Becky says:
Excellent analysis. But I do take issue with this: The elites don’t want to be called “elite.” Are you kidding? They LOVE the title, but like all things PC, they won't voice it.
Credentialed gentry is likewise far too flattering. How hard is it to get a teaching credential from a state university? Not to mention the highly tattooed guy who cuts my hair who considers himself among them, or the bossy loudmouth mom who thinks everyone is enjoying her drone on endlessly about how wise and progressive she is.
You might say "credentialed gentry" was not meant to apply to them. Really? I hear zero difference in the attitudes espoused by the two, and I know plenty of both truly credentialed and the uncredentialed. Money and pedigree seem to play no factor in how these "intellectual elites" view themself as better than all of those others-lesser-than-me. Though I must confess that I do enjoy the smug thought that these people would suddenly find themselves banned from the self-delusion of being at one with the "intellectual elite" were "credentialed gentry" to take hold.
So.... keep working on that term. I'm thinking more along the lines of something more descriptive of the group as a whole, like "progressive zealots", "self-appointed liberal moralists" or "logic-challenged".
Progressive Zealots works best for me. but I'm open....
Credentialed gentry is likewise far too flattering. How hard is it to get a teaching credential from a state university? Not to mention the highly tattooed guy who cuts my hair who considers himself among them, or the bossy loudmouth mom who thinks everyone is enjoying her drone on endlessly about how wise and progressive she is.
You might say "credentialed gentry" was not meant to apply to them. Really? I hear zero difference in the attitudes espoused by the two, and I know plenty of both truly credentialed and the uncredentialed. Money and pedigree seem to play no factor in how these "intellectual elites" view themself as better than all of those others-lesser-than-me. Though I must confess that I do enjoy the smug thought that these people would suddenly find themselves banned from the self-delusion of being at one with the "intellectual elite" were "credentialed gentry" to take hold.
So.... keep working on that term. I'm thinking more along the lines of something more descriptive of the group as a whole, like "progressive zealots", "self-appointed liberal moralists" or "logic-challenged".
Progressive Zealots works best for me. but I'm open....
10.19.2010 | 1:52pm
Jeff says:
the shallow comments on display here from the liberal trolls give me hope for the future ... If this is the best you people can come up with then I am certain things will improve for the better ...
Inner rings ? outer rings ? where do you people live ? Certainly not on this planet ... your rose colored world view has always been a utopian fantasy better left in your own tiny minds ... in full display to the world it is simply astonishing that you are able to function in the real world on a day to day basis ... do you ever step back for one minute and think that maybe, just maybe it is you that is living a closed loop that only reinforces your fantasies and seldom ever interacts with the real world around you ?
Inner rings ? outer rings ? where do you people live ? Certainly not on this planet ... your rose colored world view has always been a utopian fantasy better left in your own tiny minds ... in full display to the world it is simply astonishing that you are able to function in the real world on a day to day basis ... do you ever step back for one minute and think that maybe, just maybe it is you that is living a closed loop that only reinforces your fantasies and seldom ever interacts with the real world around you ?
10.19.2010 | 1:55pm
furious says:
one man sneered at Beck and Hannity for not being educated because they hadn't completed their college degrees.
I guess said man sneers at Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison and Michael Dell, too.
I guess said man sneers at Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison and Michael Dell, too.
10.19.2010 | 2:26pm
Gil Costello says:
Greg Marquez - Your point is well taken. All isms of ascendency in self-importance stem from elitism, and it afflicts left and right and everywhere else. But the ascendant elites who dominate our culture, and thus have the most widespread impact on youth and our future are the elites of the left.
10.19.2010 | 3:09pm
Chuck says:
I write to express disappointment, Anchoress' columns are always so thought-provoking, but this one only provokes a question of why this seemed fresh and interesting.
The problem Anchoress notes is that our Elite Institutions don't do a particularly good job of producing or rewarding Excellence - not the NYTimes, not our best colleges, not our best thinkers. I attended an elite college, most of us were not challenged by the formal education therein - and yet, I later experienced other institutions, and oh my... The elite college, for all its flaws, was of much higher quality.
The problem she ignores is that a society that wishes to reward and encourage excellence needs Elite Instituions. So attacking the Elites is perhaps fun destruction, but it doesn't really further her objective. They might deserve that comeuppance; but the question is what helps society and the humans in it.
One solution would be to create a counter-elite: to either capture elite institutions and remake them, or to build new elite institutions.
And frankly, it seems to me that our society is heading toward a point where conflicting elites care more about defeating each other than advancing the national interest; that seems unfortunate on the one hand, but I'm not sure it's wrong. If I lived in Nazi Germany, perhaps I'd be justified in viewing my fellow citizens as the greatest threats to the world, and similarly maybe the greatest evils threatening the world nowadays are the nihilistic moralizers of the left (who would perhaps think that fundamentalists are the biggest threat). Which is perhaps why both the last administration and this one tend to have an our-team-or-excluded approach.
There is so much there... but I think this column missed those marks.
The problem Anchoress notes is that our Elite Institutions don't do a particularly good job of producing or rewarding Excellence - not the NYTimes, not our best colleges, not our best thinkers. I attended an elite college, most of us were not challenged by the formal education therein - and yet, I later experienced other institutions, and oh my... The elite college, for all its flaws, was of much higher quality.
The problem she ignores is that a society that wishes to reward and encourage excellence needs Elite Instituions. So attacking the Elites is perhaps fun destruction, but it doesn't really further her objective. They might deserve that comeuppance; but the question is what helps society and the humans in it.
One solution would be to create a counter-elite: to either capture elite institutions and remake them, or to build new elite institutions.
And frankly, it seems to me that our society is heading toward a point where conflicting elites care more about defeating each other than advancing the national interest; that seems unfortunate on the one hand, but I'm not sure it's wrong. If I lived in Nazi Germany, perhaps I'd be justified in viewing my fellow citizens as the greatest threats to the world, and similarly maybe the greatest evils threatening the world nowadays are the nihilistic moralizers of the left (who would perhaps think that fundamentalists are the biggest threat). Which is perhaps why both the last administration and this one tend to have an our-team-or-excluded approach.
There is so much there... but I think this column missed those marks.
10.19.2010 | 3:16pm
Walter Bishop says:
Anchoress' column reminds me of one by Angelo Codevilla entitled "America's Ruling Class" which appeared in the American Spectator back in July--see
spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class
spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class
10.19.2010 | 3:35pm
newton says:
dicentra - Preach it!
***
There was one case from a few months back that illustrates the consequences of the current arrogant elitism that exists in this country. Let me summarize the story:
His name is Walter Kendall Myers, a descendant of Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone) and Gilbert Grosvenor (first editor and president of the National Geographic Society). Received the best education American money could buy: boarding schools, Brown University. He worked at the State Department in a rather nice position for many years.
He spied for Cuba, along with his wife. For thirty years.
At his sentencing for the crime of espionage and wire fraud (wonder why he was not convicted of blatant treason?), he was reminded by a Federal judge who was a descendant of slaves here, of all the benefits granted to him for the virtue of being a blue-blood member of our American elite. No budge for this blue-blood: he was unrepentant. His justification for his crimes: "We acted because of our ideals and our beliefs... to defend the Cuban Revolution." His opinion of Fidel Castro, whom he met at a private dinner in Cuba? "Fidel is wonderful, just wonderful... the most... incredible statesman in... a hundred years..."
Whatever. The human rights abuses of the Castro regime don't seem to phase him at all. He probably would have worn a "Che" t-shirt were he to feel free to do that...
He will spend the rest of his miserable life in prison. His wife will get out after four years. (No, she was not Cuban.)
A privileged man in every way possible - yet he betrayed America to her face. What would Alexander Graham Bell say? What would Gilbert Grosvenor say?
This small example can very well be the consequence of the arrogance of our elites. One of these days, when their backs are against the wall, they will take the path of least resistance. They will "go Nazi", as that article you pointed us to a few months ago stated. (Not that they're not already conditioned for that: their elite education and environment have been heavily influenced by the Frankfurt School, that cursed repository of cultural Marxists.)
And when that happens... Heaven help this nation.
***
There was one case from a few months back that illustrates the consequences of the current arrogant elitism that exists in this country. Let me summarize the story:
His name is Walter Kendall Myers, a descendant of Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone) and Gilbert Grosvenor (first editor and president of the National Geographic Society). Received the best education American money could buy: boarding schools, Brown University. He worked at the State Department in a rather nice position for many years.
He spied for Cuba, along with his wife. For thirty years.
At his sentencing for the crime of espionage and wire fraud (wonder why he was not convicted of blatant treason?), he was reminded by a Federal judge who was a descendant of slaves here, of all the benefits granted to him for the virtue of being a blue-blood member of our American elite. No budge for this blue-blood: he was unrepentant. His justification for his crimes: "We acted because of our ideals and our beliefs... to defend the Cuban Revolution." His opinion of Fidel Castro, whom he met at a private dinner in Cuba? "Fidel is wonderful, just wonderful... the most... incredible statesman in... a hundred years..."
Whatever. The human rights abuses of the Castro regime don't seem to phase him at all. He probably would have worn a "Che" t-shirt were he to feel free to do that...
He will spend the rest of his miserable life in prison. His wife will get out after four years. (No, she was not Cuban.)
A privileged man in every way possible - yet he betrayed America to her face. What would Alexander Graham Bell say? What would Gilbert Grosvenor say?
This small example can very well be the consequence of the arrogance of our elites. One of these days, when their backs are against the wall, they will take the path of least resistance. They will "go Nazi", as that article you pointed us to a few months ago stated. (Not that they're not already conditioned for that: their elite education and environment have been heavily influenced by the Frankfurt School, that cursed repository of cultural Marxists.)
And when that happens... Heaven help this nation.
10.19.2010 | 4:52pm
Maria V . says:
Reading this article made me want to look up at the meaning of the dogs mentioned , in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man ..finding same gave that sense of sort of 'being rich ' .. should Christians not have more of a shudder , to think of the very rich , wondering if detrimental attitudes have crept in to their own hearts ....( which as per the parable interpretation, can make one worse than street dogs ! )
Grateful too , of being spared the bulky and wasteful big city news papers when one can gather , on line , essential news at one's own conveniance ..
that a good God gives without class distinction , the best things in life - babies , sunshine ...faith , family , friends ..capacity to forgive and be forgiven ..to be set free ..
For those who are tired of the narcissistic game in academia , healing professsions might be a welcome venue - having heard from friends how there are niche areas of unmet demands , such as in prosthetics ...the sense of fulfillment when seeing the recovery of the afflicted ..
Are not such lives part of the true 'elite' lives of a Kingdom that is possible , this side of heaven !
Grateful too , of being spared the bulky and wasteful big city news papers when one can gather , on line , essential news at one's own conveniance ..
that a good God gives without class distinction , the best things in life - babies , sunshine ...faith , family , friends ..capacity to forgive and be forgiven ..to be set free ..
For those who are tired of the narcissistic game in academia , healing professsions might be a welcome venue - having heard from friends how there are niche areas of unmet demands , such as in prosthetics ...the sense of fulfillment when seeing the recovery of the afflicted ..
Are not such lives part of the true 'elite' lives of a Kingdom that is possible , this side of heaven !
10.19.2010 | 5:27pm
Michael says:
dicentra,
I haven’t graded freshman papers at a fancy place like Cornell, so I guess I’m not a member of an elite.
But like you, I’ve watched people look down their noses at people who shop at Walmart or listen to country music. I’m Texan, so I’ve also watched a different kind of elite that looks down on people who shop at Brooks Brothers, who listen to rap, or who reads anything too high-toned. The just-folks gang has its own kind of smug condescension.
Scalia might have had something interesting to say if she really cared to analyze elitism, but she relies on gross stereotype. The elite she caricatures is dominated by liberals but also includes conservatives, libertarians, socialists, anarchists, etc. As a couple of people here have noticed, Peggy Noonan is a member of the elite, and let’s add William Buckley, who would have intimidated Beck and Hannity off the stage, exposing them with a flick of his eyebrow for their pretense of intellect and reason.
I don’t deny the existence of elites either in this country or elsewhere. What I am criticizing are the symbol games Scalia is playing.
Elite = wealthy New Yorker = liberal politics = hypocrisy.
Middle-class folks = humble people = conservative politics = all that is good and right in the world.
If Scalia has something interesting to say about elitism, she should say it. If she has something interesting to say about politics, she should say it. But the slide she makes between the two is just the same old insult game. It’s only interesting if it flatters your self-conception as the kind of down-home folk that elitists sneer at.
I haven’t graded freshman papers at a fancy place like Cornell, so I guess I’m not a member of an elite.
But like you, I’ve watched people look down their noses at people who shop at Walmart or listen to country music. I’m Texan, so I’ve also watched a different kind of elite that looks down on people who shop at Brooks Brothers, who listen to rap, or who reads anything too high-toned. The just-folks gang has its own kind of smug condescension.
Scalia might have had something interesting to say if she really cared to analyze elitism, but she relies on gross stereotype. The elite she caricatures is dominated by liberals but also includes conservatives, libertarians, socialists, anarchists, etc. As a couple of people here have noticed, Peggy Noonan is a member of the elite, and let’s add William Buckley, who would have intimidated Beck and Hannity off the stage, exposing them with a flick of his eyebrow for their pretense of intellect and reason.
I don’t deny the existence of elites either in this country or elsewhere. What I am criticizing are the symbol games Scalia is playing.
Elite = wealthy New Yorker = liberal politics = hypocrisy.
Middle-class folks = humble people = conservative politics = all that is good and right in the world.
If Scalia has something interesting to say about elitism, she should say it. If she has something interesting to say about politics, she should say it. But the slide she makes between the two is just the same old insult game. It’s only interesting if it flatters your self-conception as the kind of down-home folk that elitists sneer at.
10.19.2010 | 5:55pm
Kevin J Jones says:
Chuck @12:09 writes: "One solution would be to create a counter-elite: to either capture elite institutions and remake them, or to build new elite institutions. "
This is the necessary follow-up to all complaints about "elitism." Certain populists care more about using the elites as punching bags rather than supplanting them.
I would argue that insofar as our present elite has a monopoly of thought, this is a product of government action. Because there are so few traditionalist conservatives in positions of power, for instance, this means there is a de facto ban on traditionalist institutions.
Politically correct laws and anti-discrimination lawsuits are my favored culprits for creating this ban. Institutional feminism is a self-defense mechanism which sees conservatives as invaders who could provoke fatal legal action, which is one reason conservatives are hounded.
I'd push for exempting media and educational institutions from such laws, but I don't know if that's possible if the large corporations are still PC-mandatory.
Anti-elitism without a call for effective political action is doomed to mere populism. But if I'm correct how many conservatives can really sign on to an anti-anti-discrimination campaign? Either fight the ban on our institutions, or quit your ineffective emotion-stirring.
This is the necessary follow-up to all complaints about "elitism." Certain populists care more about using the elites as punching bags rather than supplanting them.
I would argue that insofar as our present elite has a monopoly of thought, this is a product of government action. Because there are so few traditionalist conservatives in positions of power, for instance, this means there is a de facto ban on traditionalist institutions.
Politically correct laws and anti-discrimination lawsuits are my favored culprits for creating this ban. Institutional feminism is a self-defense mechanism which sees conservatives as invaders who could provoke fatal legal action, which is one reason conservatives are hounded.
I'd push for exempting media and educational institutions from such laws, but I don't know if that's possible if the large corporations are still PC-mandatory.
Anti-elitism without a call for effective political action is doomed to mere populism. But if I'm correct how many conservatives can really sign on to an anti-anti-discrimination campaign? Either fight the ban on our institutions, or quit your ineffective emotion-stirring.
10.19.2010 | 6:33pm
Maria V. says:
For a site named 'First Things' , the defintion of 'elite' or elect seems not too complex as per St.Peter , who call the disciples 'a chosen race ,a royal priesthood , a holy nation , a people of His own ' and what their role is to be ...
10.19.2010 | 8:45pm
Tony Esolen says:
Today I chatted with a couple of freshmen before our class in Western Civilization, a cross-disciplinary course, meeting every day of the week for two years, required at our school of all freshmen and sophomores. We were talking about what they were learning in the course, and I mentioned how much it helped me in my upper-level English courses to be able to refer to Augustine's attachment to Neoplatonism before his conversion, and rely upon the fact that the students would know something of what I was talking about. They said that they didn't know anything of it either, and I laughed and replied that they would, by the end of this semester. And I added, "Unlike freshmen at that four-year community college on the other side of the city, er, you know, what's its name -- Brown!" We had a nice laugh at that. For Brown has had no real curriculum since the days when Ira Magaziner was a student rebel there, and assisted the administration in eliminating it.
So when I hear talk about our cultural elites, I shake my head. The self-appointed archons of our lives are not particularly well educated, not by standards that Woodrow Wilson (whom I dislike) and Theodore Roosevelt (whom I admire as a man, somewhat less as a president) would have recognized. The elites of our American past were in part a leisured class with the money and the time to pursue classical studies, sending their sons to Deerfield or Groton or Phillips Andover, where they would receive a redoubtable education in the liberal arts. It is enlightening in this regard to read the letters between Roosevelt and his prep-school son Kermit, who clearly knew more at age sixteen about the history of the west, and about our literary heritage, than graduates of Brown or Princeton (my mater ferox) know now. Kermit, in fact, had the fine literary taste to recognize the poetic talents of a man struggling to make a living in New York -- Edwin Arlington Robinson, whom he recommended to his father's attention.
The baffling thing now is that our "intellectual" elites have less cause to think themselves so than any previous generation of their peers have had -- if the articles they write, which show the astonishing limits of their knowledge, and the juvenility of their use of language, provide any reliable evidence. And at that I haven't begun to broach the issue of wisdom -- rather than technical facility in some "field". It is not simply that our elites could not write something like Democracy in America, or The Idea of a University, but that our schools and our attachment to easy entertainment have made it difficult for them -- for us -- even to think the thoughts therein.
Then, too, the elitism of the past was palliated by two things, one of which Murray discusses. That is, until quite recently, a doctor or a lawyer would be likely to live on the same street with a plumber or a mason, and attend the same church, and basically enjoy the same community life (there was, note well, such a thing as a community life). We did not then have the phenomenon of the double-professional household, ratcheting up the distance between higher income and lower income households, ratcheting up the price of housing, and removing the higher professionals from the ordinary neighborhood. The second factor is that America saw, for more than a century, educators and publishers attempting to bring something of that classical education to the common people; I recall that my mother, in the coal-mining backwater where I grew up, studied Latin for three years in high school. But that was done in by the great elitist egalitarian John Dewey.
And here is a further irony. Choose a student at random attending, let's say, Georgetown; and another student, Catholic and homeschooled. Which one do you suppose is more likely to have read a little bit of Cicero? While the elites have largely abandoned a broad education in the great works of the west, countless ordinary people have taken it up with fervor. So when the "elites" look down upon the rest of us, it galls me all the more...
So when I hear talk about our cultural elites, I shake my head. The self-appointed archons of our lives are not particularly well educated, not by standards that Woodrow Wilson (whom I dislike) and Theodore Roosevelt (whom I admire as a man, somewhat less as a president) would have recognized. The elites of our American past were in part a leisured class with the money and the time to pursue classical studies, sending their sons to Deerfield or Groton or Phillips Andover, where they would receive a redoubtable education in the liberal arts. It is enlightening in this regard to read the letters between Roosevelt and his prep-school son Kermit, who clearly knew more at age sixteen about the history of the west, and about our literary heritage, than graduates of Brown or Princeton (my mater ferox) know now. Kermit, in fact, had the fine literary taste to recognize the poetic talents of a man struggling to make a living in New York -- Edwin Arlington Robinson, whom he recommended to his father's attention.
The baffling thing now is that our "intellectual" elites have less cause to think themselves so than any previous generation of their peers have had -- if the articles they write, which show the astonishing limits of their knowledge, and the juvenility of their use of language, provide any reliable evidence. And at that I haven't begun to broach the issue of wisdom -- rather than technical facility in some "field". It is not simply that our elites could not write something like Democracy in America, or The Idea of a University, but that our schools and our attachment to easy entertainment have made it difficult for them -- for us -- even to think the thoughts therein.
Then, too, the elitism of the past was palliated by two things, one of which Murray discusses. That is, until quite recently, a doctor or a lawyer would be likely to live on the same street with a plumber or a mason, and attend the same church, and basically enjoy the same community life (there was, note well, such a thing as a community life). We did not then have the phenomenon of the double-professional household, ratcheting up the distance between higher income and lower income households, ratcheting up the price of housing, and removing the higher professionals from the ordinary neighborhood. The second factor is that America saw, for more than a century, educators and publishers attempting to bring something of that classical education to the common people; I recall that my mother, in the coal-mining backwater where I grew up, studied Latin for three years in high school. But that was done in by the great elitist egalitarian John Dewey.
And here is a further irony. Choose a student at random attending, let's say, Georgetown; and another student, Catholic and homeschooled. Which one do you suppose is more likely to have read a little bit of Cicero? While the elites have largely abandoned a broad education in the great works of the west, countless ordinary people have taken it up with fervor. So when the "elites" look down upon the rest of us, it galls me all the more...
10.19.2010 | 10:42pm
Ken says:
If the preferred candidate is a female, the credentialed gentry—including their liberated women—feel no compunction in labeling her as “crazy,” “dumb”, “mean,” or even “a whore.”
O'Donnell's claiming that scientists have created mice with fully functioning human brains is dumb, as is her sarcastically asking why monkeys aren't still evolving into humans. In the vernacular, statements like that are "crazy."Palin is mean, as she has been illustrating for two full years now. And has anyone else but that Jerry Brown aide called Whitman a whore?
O'Donnell's claiming that scientists have created mice with fully functioning human brains is dumb, as is her sarcastically asking why monkeys aren't still evolving into humans. In the vernacular, statements like that are "crazy."Palin is mean, as she has been illustrating for two full years now. And has anyone else but that Jerry Brown aide called Whitman a whore?
10.19.2010 | 10:50pm
Dan Gieske says:
Well Michael suppose you have a go at showing us how this article should have been written.
10.19.2010 | 11:23pm
Gil Costello says:
Elitism can have a positive meaning, as in what Maria V. shows us. But I sense what Scalia is referring to is the elitism that smacks of a snobbery that looks so far down on others they disagree with that they would consider it a waste of time to engage them in serious discussion, when in fact they are secretly cowering in their own weak intellectual positions; they "tend to rebuff, avoid or ignore those regarded as inferior."
I recall back in the early 70s when I was involved in the politics of the radical left, and I would watch William Buckley’s "Firing Line" religiously (I and others thought of Buckley as a closet liberal because of his serious engagement with those on the left). There was no snobbery in him, and he always sought to intellectual engage those he disagreed with.
I recall how Allen Ginsberg could not hold his own during an interview with Buckley and resorted to "Om"ing his way out of intellectual engagement.
The elites that Scalia is referring to are no doubt those who rule in our mainline cultural institutions as snobs, and precisely why they like to be referred to as elites; and Scalia gave them the benefit of the doubt. But there's no question they find intellectual engagement anathema, and why so many students at our universities are not taught how to engage others intellectually, but to embrace the dogma of snobs.
I recall back in the early 70s when I was involved in the politics of the radical left, and I would watch William Buckley’s "Firing Line" religiously (I and others thought of Buckley as a closet liberal because of his serious engagement with those on the left). There was no snobbery in him, and he always sought to intellectual engage those he disagreed with.
I recall how Allen Ginsberg could not hold his own during an interview with Buckley and resorted to "Om"ing his way out of intellectual engagement.
The elites that Scalia is referring to are no doubt those who rule in our mainline cultural institutions as snobs, and precisely why they like to be referred to as elites; and Scalia gave them the benefit of the doubt. But there's no question they find intellectual engagement anathema, and why so many students at our universities are not taught how to engage others intellectually, but to embrace the dogma of snobs.
10.19.2010 | 11:49pm
Michael says:
Dan Gieske,
Happily. There are several comments above that show far more intellect than Scalia’s caricatures. I don’t agree with Tony Esolen’s conclusion, but he points to actual concrete examples such as Wilson and Roosevelt, and he discusses knowledge that he thinks is valuable, such as St. Augustine, Cicero, and Tocqueville.
Newton points to an example (Walter Kendall Myers), but his argument strikes me as silly. Still, he has the virtue of making a claim grounded in real examples instead of made up ones.
I don’t know why Jeff wants to resort to insults by calling Greg Marquez a “liberal troll.” I’m not sure why Jeff thinks Marquez’s argument is necessarily liberal. It might be, but Marquez raises an interesting question about whether we should be concerned with elites or inner rings.
I think Richard is more on target as he tries to identify who actually has power, but his comment suffers from a similar overgenerality that Scalia suffers from.
All of these comments were thought-provoking. Scalia’s was not. She had fun trading on stereotype and hoped her audience wouldn’t notice that she had nothing to say more than that she thinks her opposition is elitist. There’s nothing wrong with that argument in itself, but she should at least offer some evidence. She just figures if she says “limo” and “New York Times” we’ll all just nod knowingly and go along with her. Claims should be followed by evidence, examples, quotations, not stereotype and invention. I didn’t go to Cornell or have dicentra as my freshman teacher, but I learned that much in freshman writing.
By the way, I must be hopelessly naïve or dense or something not to have gotten the irony until now. Dicentra agrees with Scalia that New York elites are a pernicious problem. And he even confesses that he was once an elitist who looked down on the uneducated. Then he turns around and, unable to stop his professorial habits, he grades my comment, saying, “your analysis is well written in its way but the intellectual content is no deeper than the papers I corrected for my freshman writing seminar at Cornell.” So the former elitist, now anti-elitist, is saying that I have only risen to the level of a freshman at an elite university in New York. I guess the implication is that I am elite but hopelessly ignorant like the rest of the elite attending places like Cornell. I probably look down on Texans. But wait, I am Texan. Never mind.
Anyway, maybe Scalia had to crank out something by deadline. Do you think her article makes an interesting point? What is it?
Happily. There are several comments above that show far more intellect than Scalia’s caricatures. I don’t agree with Tony Esolen’s conclusion, but he points to actual concrete examples such as Wilson and Roosevelt, and he discusses knowledge that he thinks is valuable, such as St. Augustine, Cicero, and Tocqueville.
Newton points to an example (Walter Kendall Myers), but his argument strikes me as silly. Still, he has the virtue of making a claim grounded in real examples instead of made up ones.
I don’t know why Jeff wants to resort to insults by calling Greg Marquez a “liberal troll.” I’m not sure why Jeff thinks Marquez’s argument is necessarily liberal. It might be, but Marquez raises an interesting question about whether we should be concerned with elites or inner rings.
I think Richard is more on target as he tries to identify who actually has power, but his comment suffers from a similar overgenerality that Scalia suffers from.
All of these comments were thought-provoking. Scalia’s was not. She had fun trading on stereotype and hoped her audience wouldn’t notice that she had nothing to say more than that she thinks her opposition is elitist. There’s nothing wrong with that argument in itself, but she should at least offer some evidence. She just figures if she says “limo” and “New York Times” we’ll all just nod knowingly and go along with her. Claims should be followed by evidence, examples, quotations, not stereotype and invention. I didn’t go to Cornell or have dicentra as my freshman teacher, but I learned that much in freshman writing.
By the way, I must be hopelessly naïve or dense or something not to have gotten the irony until now. Dicentra agrees with Scalia that New York elites are a pernicious problem. And he even confesses that he was once an elitist who looked down on the uneducated. Then he turns around and, unable to stop his professorial habits, he grades my comment, saying, “your analysis is well written in its way but the intellectual content is no deeper than the papers I corrected for my freshman writing seminar at Cornell.” So the former elitist, now anti-elitist, is saying that I have only risen to the level of a freshman at an elite university in New York. I guess the implication is that I am elite but hopelessly ignorant like the rest of the elite attending places like Cornell. I probably look down on Texans. But wait, I am Texan. Never mind.
Anyway, maybe Scalia had to crank out something by deadline. Do you think her article makes an interesting point? What is it?
10.20.2010 | 1:18am
Becky says:
Ken above is a cute example of someone who would consider himself liberal elite regardless of whether or not he is credentialed gentry. (10/19 7:42pm)
Seriously, there must be a word to describe the belief that mindless bashing of Palin and O'Donnell establishes a superior intellect. In my experience, there is little discernable difference in thought between the Kens who passed a GED and the Kens who are true credentialed gentry. They all spout the exact same nonsense - word for word.
Seriously, there must be a word to describe the belief that mindless bashing of Palin and O'Donnell establishes a superior intellect. In my experience, there is little discernable difference in thought between the Kens who passed a GED and the Kens who are true credentialed gentry. They all spout the exact same nonsense - word for word.
10.20.2010 | 1:38am
Becky says:
And to finish my thought... the same cognitive dissonance that allows Ken to consider himself an intellectual elite in the first place will be the same cognitive dissonance that allows himself to believe himself to be among the credentialed gentry. And besides, as I said (way) above, credentialed gentry is far too flattering.
I think I have it. Credentialed Eggheads. That is what the credentialed gentry really are: Eggheads. And then what is poor GED Ken left to identify with? Egghead? He's not credentialed. And it labels Credentialed Ken for what he really is: an egghead.
I think I have it. Credentialed Eggheads. That is what the credentialed gentry really are: Eggheads. And then what is poor GED Ken left to identify with? Egghead? He's not credentialed. And it labels Credentialed Ken for what he really is: an egghead.
10.20.2010 | 2:57am
Stuart Koehl says:
Some of us live constantly in and among the credentialed, and are utterly underwhelmed. I know dozens of Ph.D.s I would not trust to boil an egg, let alone manage a thirteen trillion dollar economy or global foreign policy.
The problem is the rat hole down which academics has traveled in the last half century, a product of the need to accommodate an exponential increase in the number of academics in the face of a linear increase in knowledge in most disciplines (those areas in which there has been the greatest expansion of knowledge are so esoteric as to have minimal value in the management of public affairs). As a result, more and more people are writing dissertations about less and less.
Straining mightily and bringing forth a gnat, they acquire a piece of parchment that declares them to be an expert in a particularly narrow slice of knowledge. And if it stayed at that, things would be fine. But such experts have a tendency to believe that their narrow expertise is transferrable to areas totally unrelated to their degree. Moreover, most of these degrees tend to be based on theory and speculation, rather that practical experience.
The great strength of the English (or Anglo-Scottish-American) Enlightenment as opposed to the French and German Enlightenments was its pragmatic foundation. Unlike their German and French counterparts, the Anglo-Scottish-Americans did not seek out unifying theories or build sandcastles in the air, and then try to make reality conform to their speculations. Rather, as hard-headed men of affairs, they looked at realty and derived some rough heuristics, and were willing to live with a degree of ambiguity and inconsistency, which they chalked up to the fundamental unpredictability and occasional irrationality of man.
In America, this view tended to hold until after the Civil War, when university curriculum was modernized on the German polytechnic model, the purpose of which was not to inculcate wisdom but to produce "experts". The process accelerated with the emergence of a technocratic society in the wake of World War II--and the rise of the "cult of the expert". Americans are great believers in "Do It Yourself" books (hence the popularity of sex manuals--only Americans would believe you have to read a book to do what man has been doing naturally for a couple of million years) written by experts, most of whom are self-appointed.
Fortunately, this fad seems to have run its course. The average Joe may be poorly educated and stand in awe of Ivy League grads, but he isn't stupid, and eventually he will cotton onto the fact that most of what is being spouted by these credentialed idiots is just plain old BS, and that an a--hole with a Harvard Ph.D. and a thousand dollar suit is still an a--hole.
At which point, in that fine American egalitarian fashion, he'll say, "I can do better than that"--and will proceed to demonstrate it.
The problem is the rat hole down which academics has traveled in the last half century, a product of the need to accommodate an exponential increase in the number of academics in the face of a linear increase in knowledge in most disciplines (those areas in which there has been the greatest expansion of knowledge are so esoteric as to have minimal value in the management of public affairs). As a result, more and more people are writing dissertations about less and less.
Straining mightily and bringing forth a gnat, they acquire a piece of parchment that declares them to be an expert in a particularly narrow slice of knowledge. And if it stayed at that, things would be fine. But such experts have a tendency to believe that their narrow expertise is transferrable to areas totally unrelated to their degree. Moreover, most of these degrees tend to be based on theory and speculation, rather that practical experience.
The great strength of the English (or Anglo-Scottish-American) Enlightenment as opposed to the French and German Enlightenments was its pragmatic foundation. Unlike their German and French counterparts, the Anglo-Scottish-Americans did not seek out unifying theories or build sandcastles in the air, and then try to make reality conform to their speculations. Rather, as hard-headed men of affairs, they looked at realty and derived some rough heuristics, and were willing to live with a degree of ambiguity and inconsistency, which they chalked up to the fundamental unpredictability and occasional irrationality of man.
In America, this view tended to hold until after the Civil War, when university curriculum was modernized on the German polytechnic model, the purpose of which was not to inculcate wisdom but to produce "experts". The process accelerated with the emergence of a technocratic society in the wake of World War II--and the rise of the "cult of the expert". Americans are great believers in "Do It Yourself" books (hence the popularity of sex manuals--only Americans would believe you have to read a book to do what man has been doing naturally for a couple of million years) written by experts, most of whom are self-appointed.
Fortunately, this fad seems to have run its course. The average Joe may be poorly educated and stand in awe of Ivy League grads, but he isn't stupid, and eventually he will cotton onto the fact that most of what is being spouted by these credentialed idiots is just plain old BS, and that an a--hole with a Harvard Ph.D. and a thousand dollar suit is still an a--hole.
At which point, in that fine American egalitarian fashion, he'll say, "I can do better than that"--and will proceed to demonstrate it.
10.20.2010 | 8:03am
Ken says:
Becky, if you could explain why O'Donnell's comments weren't dumb, or Palin's mocking Obama at the convention - to name just one example - wasn't mean,
you wouldn't need to fantasize about my motives for writing.
I agree with Scalia overall here. The upper-class liberal elite does by and large disdain conservatives. But the disdain flows in the other direction as well, as your post shows.
you wouldn't need to fantasize about my motives for writing.
I agree with Scalia overall here. The upper-class liberal elite does by and large disdain conservatives. But the disdain flows in the other direction as well, as your post shows.
10.20.2010 | 8:15am
Fred says:
In defense of the "elites," liberals aren't right about much, but they are right that the American public is a collective drooling, mouth-breathing moron. They are, however, wrong that only conservatives benefit from that stupidity. The conservative narrative that the public is turning against Obama because he is governing too far to the left is (and I say this as a conservative) utter nonsense. The American public neither understands nor cares about political philosophy or policy. We Americans think with our stomachs and can't see past our noses. Obama is losing popularity and, God willing, the Congress because John Q. Public doesn't have a job, or is afraid of losing his job, or has a brother-in-law who's been out of work for 10 months. Mr. Public has no memory that Obama's policies are precisely the ones that led to the disasters of the late 1970s or that it took the better part of two decades for those policies to create those disasters. Nor does he realize that even if the economy improves in the short term, in the long term the same policies will lead to the same results. He is capable neither of remembering that far back nor of thinking that far ahead. But before anyone attacks my "elitism" I will make a bet with any takers: if the economy improves between now and 2012, regardless of who runs Congress or what policies are being followed, Obama will win reelection. And when the Obama disaster manifests itself (if the Republicans can't or won't prevent it), no matter who is president or who runs Congress, the opposition party will be elected. If I'm wrong, I will publicly admit to being the moron.
10.20.2010 | 9:44am
Ken says:
Courtesy of Ruth Marcus' column this morning in the Washington Post:
Another dumb O'Donnell remark: "let me just clarify -- you're telling me the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?"
Another mean O'Donnell remark: "Mike, this is not a bake-off - get your man-pants on."
More mean Palin remarks" Obama lacks the "cojones" to reform immigration policy, and reporters who criticize her are "impotent, limp and and gutless."
Another dumb O'Donnell remark: "let me just clarify -- you're telling me the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?"
Another mean O'Donnell remark: "Mike, this is not a bake-off - get your man-pants on."
More mean Palin remarks" Obama lacks the "cojones" to reform immigration policy, and reporters who criticize her are "impotent, limp and and gutless."
10.20.2010 | 10:41am
Richard says:
Stuart Koehl,
I too work among the credentialed (in the academy, in my case), and couldn't agree more with your assessment, including your reading of American exceptionalism.
Best,
Richard
I too work among the credentialed (in the academy, in my case), and couldn't agree more with your assessment, including your reading of American exceptionalism.
Best,
Richard
10.20.2010 | 1:10pm
Gil Costello says:
Yes, I agree with Becky and Richard on Stuart Koehl's contribution, and one particular paragraph deserves to be repeated:
"Straining mightily and bringing forth a gnat, they acquire a piece of parchment that declares them to be an expert in a particularly narrow slice of knowledge. And if it stayed at that, things would be fine. But such experts have a tendency to believe that their narrow expertise is transferrable to areas totally unrelated to their degree. Moreover, most of these degrees tend to be based on theory and speculation, rather that practical experience."
"Straining mightily and bringing forth a gnat, they acquire a piece of parchment that declares them to be an expert in a particularly narrow slice of knowledge. And if it stayed at that, things would be fine. But such experts have a tendency to believe that their narrow expertise is transferrable to areas totally unrelated to their degree. Moreover, most of these degrees tend to be based on theory and speculation, rather that practical experience."
10.20.2010 | 1:14pm
Michael says:
Stuart Koehl,
I’ve learned from some of your other posts, but your post here suffers from the same problem that Scalia’s does. Lots of caricature, but no specific detail. Who exactly are the experts you find so lacking?
You say you wouldn’t trust a Ph.D. to run the economy or foreign policy, but is there someone calling for more Ph.D.’s to run our economy and foreign policy? Geithner’s background is more academic than Paulson’s, who has a Harvard MBA but loads of practical experience. Did Paulson’s experience make him a better steward of the economy than the more academic Geithner?
Of course, Condeleezza Rice really is a Ph.D. who wrote a dissertation on military policy. Did that make her a worse Secretary of State than Hillary Clinton who only managed to obtain a Yale law degree?
I agree with your larger point that credentials don’t mean that one is to be trusted outside his specialty and sometimes even within! I have no special reverence for academics, but I have no special reverence for the “average Joe” either.
If you’re saying that there are a lot of academics spouting off as if their credentials in a narrow field make them experts about everything, then, of course, you’re right. But I’ve also heard the “average Joe” spout off as if his experience working in this or that company makes him expert about everything.
You and Scalia seem to want to use your disdain for elites and your admiration for the “average Joe” as a stand in for your support of one set of politics over another. I’d rather discuss politics on their merits alone.
I’ve learned from some of your other posts, but your post here suffers from the same problem that Scalia’s does. Lots of caricature, but no specific detail. Who exactly are the experts you find so lacking?
You say you wouldn’t trust a Ph.D. to run the economy or foreign policy, but is there someone calling for more Ph.D.’s to run our economy and foreign policy? Geithner’s background is more academic than Paulson’s, who has a Harvard MBA but loads of practical experience. Did Paulson’s experience make him a better steward of the economy than the more academic Geithner?
Of course, Condeleezza Rice really is a Ph.D. who wrote a dissertation on military policy. Did that make her a worse Secretary of State than Hillary Clinton who only managed to obtain a Yale law degree?
I agree with your larger point that credentials don’t mean that one is to be trusted outside his specialty and sometimes even within! I have no special reverence for academics, but I have no special reverence for the “average Joe” either.
If you’re saying that there are a lot of academics spouting off as if their credentials in a narrow field make them experts about everything, then, of course, you’re right. But I’ve also heard the “average Joe” spout off as if his experience working in this or that company makes him expert about everything.
You and Scalia seem to want to use your disdain for elites and your admiration for the “average Joe” as a stand in for your support of one set of politics over another. I’d rather discuss politics on their merits alone.
10.20.2010 | 6:41pm
Stuart Koehl says:
" Who exactly are the experts you find so lacking? "
I suppose you are asking me to name names, but as I have to live in this town, I think I will stick to broad categories:
1. Academics in the social sciences and humanities, particularly any whose degree includes the word "studies".
2. Research scientists who have moved into administrative positions and still think they are research scientists (rather than bureaucrats).
3. Lawyers. Nothing is funnier than listening to a lawyer in an administrative position trying to discuss a technical subject--whether energy, aerospace engineering, military strategy or whatever. They have been trained to have facile minds, but they are also extraordinarily superficial, and tend to latch onto whatever concept or buzzword around which they can wrap their brains, and then use it constantly, often in an inappropriate or simply incorrect manner.
4. Journalists. Give me an old-fashioned reporter, any day of the week.
5. Theologians and philosophers. Enough said there.
I suppose you are asking me to name names, but as I have to live in this town, I think I will stick to broad categories:
1. Academics in the social sciences and humanities, particularly any whose degree includes the word "studies".
2. Research scientists who have moved into administrative positions and still think they are research scientists (rather than bureaucrats).
3. Lawyers. Nothing is funnier than listening to a lawyer in an administrative position trying to discuss a technical subject--whether energy, aerospace engineering, military strategy or whatever. They have been trained to have facile minds, but they are also extraordinarily superficial, and tend to latch onto whatever concept or buzzword around which they can wrap their brains, and then use it constantly, often in an inappropriate or simply incorrect manner.
4. Journalists. Give me an old-fashioned reporter, any day of the week.
5. Theologians and philosophers. Enough said there.
10.20.2010 | 7:01pm
Stuart Koehl says:
"You say you wouldn’t trust a Ph.D. to run the economy or foreign policy, but is there someone calling for more Ph.D.’s to run our economy and foreign policy? Geithner’s background is more academic than Paulson’s, who has a Harvard MBA but loads of practical experience. Did Paulson’s experience make him a better steward of the economy than the more academic Geithner? "
All of these would count as credentialed idiots, in my book. How many of them actually ran a business that, well, made something?
"Of course, Condeleezza Rice really is a Ph.D. who wrote a dissertation on military policy. Did that make her a worse Secretary of State than Hillary Clinton who only managed to obtain a Yale law degree? "
I can't put much space between the two regarding their capabilities as Secretaries of State. Rice was an academic Sovietologist, a discipline for which I have very little respect--as would anyone who bothered to compare their prognostications with reality. She was really unprepared to deal with a multipolar world in which Islamic terrorism dominated by subnational groups became the salient threat to global security. As for Clinton, I can't think of any prior SecState who was quite as irrelevant to the formulation and implementation of American foreign policy--which, in the Obama Administration, is made by the National Security Council and the political apparachiks (whom the recently departed General Jones characterized as "cockroaches). Both Rice and Clinton were way out of their depth trying to run a major Cabinet bureaucracy, and as a result, were captured by the Foreign Service, which then imposed its own agenda upon them.
In contrast, Leon Panetta has proven a surprisingly good Director of Central Intelligence, because he knows he has no real expertise in that field--but he is a highly skilled bureaucratic infighter who will protect the interests of whatever agency he happens to be running at the time. Of course, the CIA is so dysfunctional that it should simply be abolished and something else erected in its place, but as compared to what might have happened with someone whose credentials more closely suited the job (in theory)--someone like Bob Gates, for instance--he has done quite weill
All of these would count as credentialed idiots, in my book. How many of them actually ran a business that, well, made something?
"Of course, Condeleezza Rice really is a Ph.D. who wrote a dissertation on military policy. Did that make her a worse Secretary of State than Hillary Clinton who only managed to obtain a Yale law degree? "
I can't put much space between the two regarding their capabilities as Secretaries of State. Rice was an academic Sovietologist, a discipline for which I have very little respect--as would anyone who bothered to compare their prognostications with reality. She was really unprepared to deal with a multipolar world in which Islamic terrorism dominated by subnational groups became the salient threat to global security. As for Clinton, I can't think of any prior SecState who was quite as irrelevant to the formulation and implementation of American foreign policy--which, in the Obama Administration, is made by the National Security Council and the political apparachiks (whom the recently departed General Jones characterized as "cockroaches). Both Rice and Clinton were way out of their depth trying to run a major Cabinet bureaucracy, and as a result, were captured by the Foreign Service, which then imposed its own agenda upon them.
In contrast, Leon Panetta has proven a surprisingly good Director of Central Intelligence, because he knows he has no real expertise in that field--but he is a highly skilled bureaucratic infighter who will protect the interests of whatever agency he happens to be running at the time. Of course, the CIA is so dysfunctional that it should simply be abolished and something else erected in its place, but as compared to what might have happened with someone whose credentials more closely suited the job (in theory)--someone like Bob Gates, for instance--he has done quite weill
10.20.2010 | 9:36pm
Michael says:
Stuart Koehl,
Thanks for the answers.
Your first list is a good one. I’d like to add a whole other list of pretensions by non-“credentialed idiots.”
I like how your praise of Panetta suggests that even lawyers can turn out ok!
A few years back, Louis Menand wrote a nice little review of Philip Tetlock’s book about why experts get things wrong, especially in their area of expertise. You can find the review here (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/05/051205crbo_books1).
Thanks for the answers.
Your first list is a good one. I’d like to add a whole other list of pretensions by non-“credentialed idiots.”
I like how your praise of Panetta suggests that even lawyers can turn out ok!
A few years back, Louis Menand wrote a nice little review of Philip Tetlock’s book about why experts get things wrong, especially in their area of expertise. You can find the review here (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/05/051205crbo_books1).
10.20.2010 | 10:33pm
Michael says:
Stuart Koehl,
Thanks for the answers.
Your first list is a good one. I’d like to add a whole other list of pretensions by non-“credentialed idiots.”
I like how your praise of Panetta suggests that even lawyers can turn out ok!
A few years back, Louis Menand wrote a nice little review of Philip Tetlock’s book about why experts get things wrong, especially in their area of expertise. I have linked the review.
Thanks for the answers.
Your first list is a good one. I’d like to add a whole other list of pretensions by non-“credentialed idiots.”
I like how your praise of Panetta suggests that even lawyers can turn out ok!
A few years back, Louis Menand wrote a nice little review of Philip Tetlock’s book about why experts get things wrong, especially in their area of expertise. I have linked the review.
10.21.2010 | 2:11am
Tennwriter says:
Of course, the disdain runs both ways, but let me suggest that one side has earned it, and while the other side has issues, it has not earned the level of disdain to which it is treated.
It was not conservatives or Texans who totally messed up the economy. It was the self-anointed 'bright' people who unfortunately for them don't strike me as all that bright.
As Clint Eastwood said 'A man's got to know his limitations', and that's one of the problems with the current Establishment. They don't. They're at best half-clever, and they think they are geniuses. I, on the other hand, know I'm moderately smart with lots of faults. People with a more tragic view of human power aka conservatives will do better faced with a recalcitrant reality.
It was not conservatives or Texans who totally messed up the economy. It was the self-anointed 'bright' people who unfortunately for them don't strike me as all that bright.
As Clint Eastwood said 'A man's got to know his limitations', and that's one of the problems with the current Establishment. They don't. They're at best half-clever, and they think they are geniuses. I, on the other hand, know I'm moderately smart with lots of faults. People with a more tragic view of human power aka conservatives will do better faced with a recalcitrant reality.
10.24.2010 | 9:30am
Joe the Human Person says:
The hidden, secret essence of neo-conservatism?
Conservatism today is an unholy alliance between lower-, middle-, and upper-class, crude Materialists. An unholy alliance of all those who believe in the physical life; in possessions. And in physical solutions - football, war, jail - to solve all problems, all dissent.
Not mental solutions; not diplomacy and intellectual reconciliation. Not turning the other cheek, and suppressing our animal emotions, like anger and fighting. Intead, the conservative believes just in Greed for more and more material things. And in likewise physical solutions for conflit too: in physical killing, war, guns, as the solution to every conflict.
While looking down, on the mental/spiritual, effite intellectuals. Who want to talk things out.
Conservatism today is an unholy alliance between lower-, middle-, and upper-class, crude Materialists. An unholy alliance of all those who believe in the physical life; in possessions. And in physical solutions - football, war, jail - to solve all problems, all dissent.
Not mental solutions; not diplomacy and intellectual reconciliation. Not turning the other cheek, and suppressing our animal emotions, like anger and fighting. Intead, the conservative believes just in Greed for more and more material things. And in likewise physical solutions for conflit too: in physical killing, war, guns, as the solution to every conflict.
While looking down, on the mental/spiritual, effite intellectuals. Who want to talk things out.
10.24.2010 | 11:13am
Don says:
The meaning and connotation of the world "elite" is changing and the lack of acknowledgement to this change is affecting the discussion. "Elite" much like "prestige" is moving toward its antonym. The discussion would be much clearer if we acknowledged the change.
4.28.2011 | 3:01am
Corine Blog says:
You are right on in your analysis of the New York Times. It's primary purpose is to reassure the liberal elite that they can have their jet-set lifestyles and still be environmentalists, they can maintain their privileged pampered lifestyles free of the guilt because they hold all the right opinions. So when I hear talk about our cultural elites, I shake my head. The self-appointed archons of our lives are not particularly well educated, not by standards that Woodrow Wilson (whom I dislike) and Theodore Roosevelt (whom I admire as a man, somewhat less as a president) would have recognized. The elites of our American past were in part a leisured class with the money and the time to pursue classical studies, sending their sons to Deerfield or Groton or Phillips Andover, where they would receive a redoubtable education in the liberal arts. It is enlightening in this regard to read the letters between Roosevelt and his prep-school son Kermit, who clearly knew more at age sixteen about the history of the west, and about our literary heritage, than graduates of Brown or Princeton (my mater ferox) know now. Kermit, in fact, had the fine literary taste to recognize the poetic talents of a man struggling to make a living in New York -- Edwin Arlington Robinson, whom he recommended to his father's attention.
8.18.2011 | 9:38am
Jonna Maslow says:
Of course, Condeleezza Rice really is a Ph.D. who wrote a dissertation on military policy. Did that make her a worse Secretary of State than Hillary Clinton who only managed to obtain a Yale law degree? The money quote from Peggy Noonan is much amplified on in Christopher Lasche's book The Revolt of the Elites. He laments the decline of nobless oblige via the outsourcing to low-cost labour countries. While that's yesterday's story it does point to an important premise not acknowledged in this piece; the elites we will always have with us.
The elites with real money and influence are abetted by millions of strivers, who recognize "correct" thinking as a social marker. It may be subconscious, but I think that this has more to do with their thinking than genuine convictions. There are, of course, consequences for a society in which conventional thinking has almost nothing to do with thought.
Middle-class folk, Fussell argued, are the most keenly aware of class. As disdain has poured down on the traditional, productive occupations of the middle class, middlers have fled into less productive occupations.
Academia, for example, is a magnet for strivers. People see it as place of respectable employment and a bastion of correct thinking. Unfortunately, the striving that leads so many young people into graduate school often turns out to be a dead end: http://100rsns.blogspot.com/2010/09/14-adjuncthood-awaits.html