David Brooks takes on Elitism.

Nobody does elitism right any more decries David Brooks in todays NY Times Op-Ed where he wistfully pines for the great old days of Waspy (read lilly white) domination of our nation.

I remember working with Specialist firms on the New York Stock Exchange.  These firms had a monopoly on making bid and offer markets for NYSE listed stocks.  With this monopoly the Specialists would siphon off huge amounts of cash from investors while taking very little risk themselves.  Because of this privileged position, these firms would be willing to stand in and buy when the market was tanking (up to a point).  Why let the game blow up when you know you can make it all back and more when things stabilize?  In other words, the monopolist has a vested interest in keeping the rigged game rigged and is willing to pay off on the odd occasion where the system is threatened.

That is exactly the problem with the old Wasp elite.  They were not more ethical or moral, they simply knew that it was in their own interest not to kill the golden goose.  Stability was their birthright.  The current "meritocracy" that Brooks discusses is an entirely different world.  In the first place, it is hardly a meritocracy.  The same advantages of wealth and access exist as before, it is just that overall the system is vastly less secure and so the elite have less of a handle on what they need to risk in order to maintain it.
 
The people who get ahead in this system know that their status can be taken away from them as quickly as they got it.  While they delude themselves into believing that their innate cognitive abilities and effort got them this far, in fact they are not secure in the way that the old Wasps were.  They have adopted a fatalistic throw away view of the future that leads them to try and score quick because the rules may change.

Just desserts?

Several years ago the following  headline made news:

"In four weeks, the world's largest toy company recalled more than 20 million toys that had been made in China.  The reason?  Lead paint."  [From Wikipedia] "On August 11, 2007, Zhang Shuhong, co-owner of the Lee Der Toy Company, which supplied  Mattel with toys based on the Big Bird and Elmo from Sesame Street and Nickelodeon's Dora the Explorer, committed suicide at one of his factories, leaving his factory littered with goods made for Mattel and its Fisher-Price division.   Before hanging himself, he paid off all his 5,000 staff.'"

Apparently, this scion of communist China, took personal responsibility for his and his companies misdeed. What in his educational background lead him to do what so many in the West cannot?
 
Would that the leaders of the world's largest banks and their lieutenants who engaged in racketeering by fixing the Libor rate do the same.  Instead, they will likely beat a hasty retreat to a comfy retirement.  Perhaps some book tours.

Elitism and Science.

One may get the impression from our prior article, that we are unalterably opposed to the idea of elite leadership.  Far from it.  Rather, we are opposed to leadership that claims to be elite based not upon deeds but upon hereditary position.  We will explore this idea in this next piece.

It should seem obvious that one should not choose a doctor simply because they are socially popular.  When one chooses a doctor they seek someone who by virtue of their effort have become experts in their particular field of medicine.  How does one become an expert?  By educating oneself extensively in the literature of the field and by training in medicine under experienced people.  In short, one would always want an elite doctor if the playing field was level.  

Now that seems fine to most people where medicine is concerned but what about other areas of science?  For most of our history, American's respected science as a positive force that could improve life for people and make the country stronger.  Science is perhaps the easiest example of a field where the elite run the show and that makes sense.  One needs an advanced education in order to become a scientist in the first place!   Science is not uniform however, it is based upon competing ideas.  The scientific method is one in which theories are developed and then tested in the real world.  Often times there are many possible ways of explaining a particular phenomenon.  The rigorous nature of testing and the number of peers that review the material are all important in determining what becomes scientific "fact" at any given time.  One can describe science as a kind of jury system based upon the preponderance of the evidence for a particular assertion.  In this sense it is like a civil trial in the U.S. Judicial System.  Expert witnesses are called, evidence is tested, and conclusions are reached in an open forum.   Now it may well be that the consensus leads to the wrong verdict but the best part of the system is that the verdict is temporary.  The trial never ends and the conclusion is not written in stone.  So when we speak about scientific facts we can have confidence in the elite foundation of the system because it is has a sense of humility built into it.  Scientific facts are provisional.

The system is not a free for all, however, all opinions are not equally valid and all ideas do not and should not have equal weight.  Evidence and consensus among experts determines which ideas are established science for the time.  This system has allowed us to probe the far reaches of the universe and the basic building blocks of matter and yet there are some who would claim that they have no need to follow the consensus of elite scientists but rather that they can pick and choose among various options whether they themselves are trained scientists or not.  For them the system is not based upon the preponderance of the evidence.  Rather, their view is that the standard for validating science should be more akin to a criminal trial.  If there is any reasonable doubt as to the opinion of science, then personal preference should rule the day.  If one scientist can be found (or hired) to espouse an outlying opinion that is in concert with ones personal preference then one should simply go along with that scientist and throw mud on the others.  Such is the idiocy of our day.  Just as we would not choose a doctor who tells us we are healthy when we are not, we cannot choose science just because it suits our own desires for the way things should be.

Elitism, as American as it gets.

It has become commonplace for Republicans of all stripes to paint themselves as defenders of the United States Constitution and its true heirs. They posit a world in which progressives are activists who are changing the original intent of the Constitution through the advancement of alien (elite, European, take your pick) values that could hardly have even been considered when the Constitution was framed.  From the recent healthcare decision to the 2010 decisions on Gun Rights and the Citizens United case regarding corporate funding of political campaigns these "conservatives" suggest that there is a definite pattern that can be found within the specific writings and milieu of the founders that should be used to ascertain the intent of the framers on particular matters of government.  In short, these "originalists" believe that they can read the minds of long dead politicians, and ought to apply those readings faithfully to the problems of today. 

Whether one believes that judges can indeed tease out the framers original intent when deciding cases, one should always remember one fundamental fact and that is that the framers were irredeemably elitist in their view of the common man and designed a system of government specifically to stymy the passions and weaknesses of the great unwashed.

William F. Buckly once summarized the conservative disdain for elitist intellectuals  when he stated that he would prefer to "entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University".  While savvy politically, this statement is a complete betrayal of the framers' vision and the Constitution that they created.

Like Buckley himself, the framers of the Constitution were undeniably elitists.  They were, if not as privileged as European nobles, still  aristocratic in both position and outlook. In addition to being wealthy relative to most Americans, a number of the leading framers were hyper-educated intellectuals, fluent in many languages, well read, and more than willing to look to European history and European economic ideals in order to find examples to inspire their new form of government.  In point of fact, the framers were exactly the kind of "smarter than the poor dumb common folk know-it-alls" that Republicans now decry at every chance they get. 

One need only read the published writings of the founders and their flowery letters to one another to know that they had little faith in the common man.  Rather they designed a system of government that was specifically engineered to keep ordinary Americans from exercising any voice at all.  What is the reason for this prejudice?  Simply that they felt that elites were better and more foresighted and choosing a course of action for the country. 

Thomas Jefferson perhaps most singularly personified the kind of intellectual elitism that is now so unfashionable in certain circles.  Jefferson spoke no less than 5 languages, was deeply interested in the life of the mind, including various continental philosophical systems and was an avowed and lifelong Francophile.  Much has been made about Jefferson's idea of a yeoman farmer and his statements on the dangers of big government, but Jefferson's agrarian philosophy embraced the plantation as much as it did the single family farmer working his small plot of land. 

The Framers were not modern men.  They lived in a specific time and place.  They believed that voters should not be untethered members of society who owned no property and did not already have the wherewithal both economically and educationally to deliberate on national issues.  Rather they set up the constitution in full knowledge that most of the original states had drastic limitations upon who could vote and frequently limited that vote to white Protestant landholding men.  Many classes of individuals could not vote, most notably women and certainly not slaves.  In point of fact because of the limitations imposed upon voting at the state level, less than 10% of the country could vote during the first national election after the Constitution was adopted.

Ultimately, the idea that we should look to the framers intent when trying to settle matters of Constitutional law rather than adopting more expansive notion of evolving law is certainly open to legitimate debate.  However, it is critical to recognize that to be an originalist is by definition to accept a worldview that is fundamentally elitist.  Republicans cannot have it both ways.  They cannot claim to be conservative on the Constitution without also recognizing and accepting that elitism is built into the fabric of this country and its Constitution.