Huffingpost.com featured an article today by Raymond J. Learsy (an oil trader turned ’scholar’). He makes an argument that if we could only be more like France , well, everything would be better. Why? Because France is ruled by elites. And he references another article, this one by the New York Times David Brooks, who, Learsy seems to think, argues everything would be better if only we could be more like China. Why? Because China is ruled by elites.
My naive belief is that ‘elitism’ is bad. Bad as in the headline ‘Liberals are Elitists’ would offend my liberal friends. I would not utter it in polite company.
Let us save for another day a discussion about the virtues of elitism…it is a rich field, with a rich history in the literature, and may in time be at the very heart of the difference in opinion between conservatives and liberals. I’m keen to toss in a few thoughts right now. But let’s just make the point that this writer is most distinctly arguing that elitism is good. Some excerpts, first from Learsy:
It [is] something much more fundamental. France’s governance emanates from an elite corp of public servants, graduates of the “grands ecoles” who run the sinews of the Ministries of State. It has given France a government whose dedication and commitment to the general weal is keenly suited to a fiercely competitive world…France has a government with vision, having the welfare of the general public foremost in its sights.
And these excerpts from Brooks:
The top 1 percent will go to the elite universities. Some of the others will go to second-tier schools, at best. These unfortunates will find that, while their career prospects aren’t permanently foreclosed, the odds of great success are diminished. Suicide rates at these schools are high, as students come to feel they have failed their parents… You are truly a golden child, because you succeed in university as well. You have a number of opportunities… you decide to enter government service, which is less risky and gives you chances to get rich (under the table) and serve the nation.
But Brooks concludes:
Perhaps it’s simply impossible for a top-down memorization-based elite to organize a flexible, innovative information economy, no matter how brilliant its members are.
Read it for yourself, but it seems clear to me Brooks is being facetious, writing tongue-in-cheek, and that by quoting him Learsy is being foot-in-mouth.
To summarize, clearly Mr. Learsy is pro liberal elitism, but lacks the reading comprehension skills necessary to make his point. Do mainstream liberals agree with Mr. Learsy’s endorsement of elitism?
There are too many examples of elitisim gone bad-liberal and conservative-to name. Let’s briefly mention two: Kennedy’s “best and brightest” who led us into Vietnam and Bush’s “dream team”
foreign policy crew plunging us into the Iraq/Afghanistan imbroglio, trashing the Constitution
along the way. Both examples flowed largely from a monumental arrogance refusing to admit
even the possibility of error or mistake.
That is the regrettable core of elitism. The elitist through education or other avenues comes
to believe that human frailties, biases, and limits to understanding don’t really apply to him
or her. Again, I don’t believe that either liberals or conservatives have cornered the market
on this particularly dangerous habit of mind, although as a liberal I think the conservative
variety of elitism has generally been more iniquitious in recent years, but that is another
subject.
So when anyone advocates government by elites, alarm bells should be going off.
[...] Liberals are Elitists [...]