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August 10, 2010
America's Ruling Class
America's Ruling Class - And the Perils of Revolution by Angelo M. Codevilla
in The American Spectator, July-August 2010 edition
I'm reviewing an article, not a book, but it is a long article, an important article, and it will be helpful for me to summarize what I read. Dr. Codevilla is a retired professor from Boston University.
The first half dozen or so paragraphs make the point that America has two classes. In September 2008 the TARP legislation was supported by Republicans, Democrats, and the mainstream media. In response to a financial and credit crisis TARP provided much more government spending, government debt and government control over the economy. 75% to 80% of the public opposed it. TARP was adopted by the combination of society's leaders whom Codevilla calls the "ruling class" on the theory that the matters addressed were "beyond the general public's understanding."
Republican leaders may make a show of partisan opposition to more government, more spending and debt, especially when they are the minority party, but when the chips are down they support more government, more spending and more debt. Republican leaders are very much a part of the ruling class.
In decades past there was great diversity in the country and as a consequence great diversity in Washington political leaders. Today the training of future elites is surprisingly uniform across the country. Our future leaders receive guidance at the right schools, soak up culture from the same entertainment and news sources, and emerge with a shared viewpoint on good and evil, history, sin (against minorities and the environment), saints, right and wrong words, tastes, habits...
Codevilla explains how that shared worldview of the elites differs from the views of most Americans and from our heritage.
I. The Political Divide
The deep division in our national political life is not between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats make up a bit less than 1/3 of the population. They like big government and the leaders who run things. The other 2/3 of the country, when given a choice in polling, falls into "undecided", "none of the above", "tea party" or some other unaffiliated category. Independents and most of the people who (reluctantly) vote Republican do not have real representation in electoral politics.
Badmouthing the political elite, the ruling class, is something a majority of the country engages in. The ruling class has given us an explosion in the size and cost of government, they started wars they proceeded to lose, they have given us a sick economy strangled by debt to the point of national insolvency, stagnant or rising cost of living, tax increases, and they lie and "talk down to the American people."
Codevilla identifies the ruling class and the country class - that substantial majority which is not represented in our current electoral politics.
II. The Ruling Class
Who are the rulers, how did America develop a privileged class, and how do they differ from the rest of us?
The bottom line is they gained and hold power by connecting to an ever bigger government, and by a certain shared attitude. It is helpful to recognize who they are not.
Being in the ruling class is not based on wealth or family social standing because there are wealthy and socially prominent conservatives. The ruling class includes wealthy people, as well as middle class and poor. The key is members of the ruling class depend on government for their careers, their fortunes, and their well-being.
Being in the ruling class is not based on professional achievement. Justice Clarence Thomas and former President George W. Bush will never be accepted. What matters is "comity" that is being with the right people, endorsing or loving what is approved, rejecting or hating what is not, and basically showing you share the manners, tastes and interests of this elite.
Being in the ruling class is not based on intelligence or high academic achievement. Harvard Prof Lawrence Tribe claimed authorship of a book written by his assistant, who plagiarized. For a conservative that would cripple an academic career but two other ruling class insiders, Harvard President Derek Bok and Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan cleared him. On the other hand distinguished scholars who show the flaws in politically correct views are shunned, e.g. MIT's Richard Lindzen and UVA's S. Fred Singer, both of whom have written scholarly articles opposing global warming.
The ruling class claims intellectual superiority based on prestigious institutions they have captured, but with widespread grade inflation in our country they increasingly grant admission to applicants "whose most prominent feature is their commitment to fit in" to the privileged elite.
III. The Faith
Even though the assumption is baseless, the assumption of intellectual superiority is the key to understanding America's ruling class.
America didn't start that way. Our founders said, "all men are created equal" based on belief that all are created in the image of God, on a desire for equal treatment under British law, and on the ideas of John Locke.
Rejection of the idea of equality has a long history. Early in the 18th Century "science" was the basis of claims of racial differences (with white people being superior). Darwin, with survival of the fittest, was taken to explain why whites ruled. Darwin's theories also implied inferior groups could be "improved" (by superior "improvers"). This powerful idea launched the Progressive Era, with Woodrow Wilson using the power of government to reshape society.
This launch of Progressivism did not go well. There was world war which was a horrific tragedy, failure to build workable institutions to keep the peace, economic hardship, and Prohibition. The American people rejected the idea of supposedly wise leaders reshaping society. The reaction of Progressive leaders was "there's something wrong with the American people."
In the interwar years the cultural divide between the "educated class" and ordinary people widened. The elites had admiration for communist Russia. The Scopes Monkey Trial (over teaching evolution in schools) made Progressives think of ordinary Americans as "willful ignoramuses."
FDR invented the brain trust and brought the elite into government and to power. The elite made the rules and their disdain for common people grew. Academics were teaching courses which equated conservatism with having a personality disorder, and asserting that either a person was a liberal democrat of a latent fascist.
Today this assumption of superiority, and disdain for common people, is deeply ingrained in the ruling class. What ordinary people think or say is irrelevant because they are inferior. We need only listen to Obama telling fellow elitists in San Francisco how common folk cling to their faith and guns.
IV. The Agenda: Power
The ruling class claims moral and intellectual superiority so one might think their agenda would be healing the planet, world peace, equality (of result) for all... but no, the agenda is power, always increasing the power of government, which they control. The means is using patronage, giving money and political benefits to supporters. The more wealth they take from people who earn it, the more they can use to buy support and to enrich themselves. Patronage is the tool, creating dependency is the strategy.
V. Dependency Economics
Total government spending exceeds 1/3 of the economy. By taxing, borrowing and spending at this massive level, the ruling class is the arbiter of who prospers and who bears the economic burdens.
In addition to the level of spending, the market is overruled by unequal treatment. Government "tilts" the playing field. The health care law of 2010 has 2700 pages to specify which states, industries, unions, etc. benefit and which bear the burdens. There are countless boards and commissions which have discretion (i.e. power). "Nowadays, the members of our ruling class admit they do not read the laws. They don't have to. Because modern laws are grants of discretion, all anybody has to know about them is who they empower."
Since economic benefits result from government discretion, political influence not competitiveness, price or quality, is what matters. More and more people are dependent on government. All this teaches Americans that satisfying the elite is a surer way to make a living than producing things people want to buy.
The 2010 health care law shows the modus operandi of the ruling class; tax citizens and force them to pay for health insurance. Use the money for government to provide health services. Use the wide discretion to decide who gets health care, how much of it, and what care they receive. If someone doesn't like what they get, they no longer have the money to seek alternative care, if in fact it is available. The ruling class exercises the power of life and death.
VI. Who Depends on Whom?
The Constitution, if you go by what it says rather than by what ruling class academics and judges say, significantly limits government power and protects the rights of citizens from government infringement. As originally conceived, Americans were really free, making the choices about their own lives without interference from politicians, judges and bureaucrats, and government had to serve the people because voters and their votes really mattered.
Woodrow Wilson, the archetypal elitist, recognized these impediments to the power of the ruling class 125 years ago, in an 1885 article entitled Congressional Government.
So the "perpetual agenda" of the elite is to concentrate power, diminish the impact of votes, enhance the power of political leaders and of groups working with the elite. A major step was to develop the concept of a "living" constitution where ruling class judges eliminate the restrictions on government and make the document "mean" something other than what it says.
One example is in Baker v. Carr (1962) which allows gerrymandering. Congressional districts are drawn so that a single party is dominant in each, incumbents are always reelected, and votes are meaningless.
With individual votes being irrelevant party leaders bring in major organizations to support their agenda. The AMA supported the new health care law in spite of the fact that polls showed an overwhelming majority of doctors opposed it. AMA leaders had multimillion dollar contracts for health care from the government. Each group within the ruling class was scratching the other's back, and to hell with what doctors wanted.
Similarly, in the government's dispute with Arizona over illegal immigration the National Association of Chiefs of Police supported Washington although the vast majority of police chiefs opposed. In their official capacity members of the National Association received millions in federal funds. To hell with what police really think.
Labor unions are tied to the government, with the SEIU being the worst example. The SEIU did not win the ballots of workers in secret elections, they unionized workers by making deals with politicians and they pour money into the campaigns of their political allies.
Today a vast bureaucracy rules many aspects of American life. All manner of rights have been lost, especially equal treatment under law. The whole purpose of our incredibly complex government is to treat people unequally. Sometimes this goal is achieved by incredibly complex laws, like the Internal Revenue Code. The unique power of judges matters greatly too, but mostly unequal treatment is achieved by grants of discretion to bureaucrats.
Today the text of the Constitution means little. "Interstate commerce" has been stretched to justify laws unrelated to commerce. Whole new rights, not mentioned in the Constitution, like the right to privacy, have been invented.
Things have progressed to the point that now the ruling class can dispense with the charade of following the Constitution. When Nancy Pelosi was asked what in the Constitution allows Congress to force people to buy health insurance, she replied "Are you serious?"
VII. Disaggregating and Dispiriting
Up to this point the discussion has been about economic, civil, and political issues. However the highest priority of the ruling class is to change the family and spiritual values of society - the culture war.
To win the culture war; to suppress religious faith, accept all manner of sexual expression, destroy "social prejudices," and to change morals and values, the ruling class must destroy the traditional family. Woodrow Wilson, the great pioneer of progressivism, was a university teacher before he became president. His goal was, "to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible."
The media and academia wage war on the family by positive portrayal of alternative lifestyles and negative images of fathers. No fault divorce diminishes the distinction between cohabitation and marriage. Examples of infidelity by political leaders abound. At one time the military, which greatly values integrity in its leaders, regarded infidelity as evidence of a lack of integrity. They have been massively criticized. The federal government paid women to have children out of wedlock. There has been an explosion of children growing up without a father in the house, and this is great for the ruling class. Unmarried mothers need help, which government provides, so single mothers are the most faithful voters for the Democratic Party.
The ruling class teaches that the relationship between men and women, and with their children, is contingent, while the relationship between children and the state is fundamental. Hilary Clinton and others have written in support of a direct relationship between government and children. Today schools can order pregnancy tests and send girls to abortion clinics without even telling the parents. There is a strong political effort to stop home schooling.
Core issues are at stake. What is the right way to live? What is true, and good? Who decides? It is not parents and not ordinary people who decide. The ruling class knows better.
Unenlightened people believe in God and that we are subject to His laws. They think they can make valid judgments about good and evil, and they can use reason to make sound choices. The ruling class knows faith is a superstition, judgments are subjective, and that "ordinary people can no more be trusted with reason than they can with guns." Consensus among the right people is the only standard of truth. Facts and logic are valid only if the right people acknowledge them.
The ruling class is adamant that only it has the right to pronounce what "science" determines. When the Virginia attorney general subpoenaed data behind the hockey stick graph which supposedly justified the theory of global warming, he was attacked by the Washington Post and the University of Virginia faculty as making an "assault on reason" and an attack on science - despite the particular research being discredited, there being indications of fraud, the State of Virginia in part funding the research, and billions in political expenditures being based on the research! Science-by-secret-data is not science, nor is science interpreted solely by a segment of society with its own partisan agenda.
By identifying science and reason only with themselves, our rulers delegitimize the opposition. Everything they want to do (wipe out religious faith, destroy the family, etc. etc.) is right, rational and good. All opposition is ignorant, harmful and wrong.
VIII. Meddling and Apologies
Foreign policy is an area where the mindset of our rulers is revealed. Their confidence in the superiority of their intelligence, values and purposes leads them to meddle in the affairs of other countries, because they know better. In his 2005 inaugural speech Bush said America cannot be free until the whole world is free. The statement was false, even foolish but that was his mindset. He could justifiably interfere wherever he choose to bring the blessings of democracy. This is not just a Bush problem or a Republican problem; Dr. Codevilla names four wars, Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, two started by Republicans and two by Democrats, and I can think of a fifth, Clinton's war with Serbia. Vital American interests were hardly ever at stake.
To the disgust of our rulers the American people don't want war unless it's really necessary, and then they want to fight to win. Ordinary Americans have a pretty good sense of the classic idea of vital national interest. Since ordinary people don't have the profound insights of the ruling class, the solution for the rulers is to lie and continue to pursue their objectives. Woodrow Wilson told the Europeans he had to have the League of Nations because the American people insisted on it, then he told the American people he had to have it because the Europeans made it a non-negotiable demand. In fact it was the private idea of Wilson and his progressive friends.
It's not just wars where our ruling class meddles in the internal affairs of other countries. Dr. Codevilla does not mention it but Dinesh D'Souza in his book The Enemy At Home (reviewed in this blog site) convincingly documents how our rulers are working hard to destroy families and morality in developing countries, in the name of women's rights.
Our rulers are quick to apologize to foreigners, not for what the rulers have done, but for the views and actions of ordinary Americans. Obama apologizes to Europeans that the US has not met its responsibilities to reduce carbon emissions, even though the American people never assumed such responsibility. Obama apologized for America's use of the atom bomb to end the war with Japan. Bill Clinton apologized to Africans for slavery in the US. Recently an Assistant Secretary of State apologized to China [?] for Arizona's immigration legislation. These apologies make no sense, but they reveal the mindset of the ruling class, namely its contempt for our country and the American people.
IX. The Country Class
The Country Class is Dr. Codevilla's term for ordinary Americans, the not-ruling-class. It is very diverse and hard to define. Both classes include educated and uneducated, successful and not, rich and poor, after all a welfare recipient can be just as enthused about big government as a career politician. Perhaps the best way to differentiate the classes is by their attitudes.
Members of the country class are disgusted with our inept but haughty leaders and reject their programs - ever higher taxes, expanding government, subsidizing political favorites, social engineering, abortion... many but not all strongly favor marriage, family and religious practice.
A business person of the country class wants to prosper by producing goods or services of value, which consumers willingly buy. A business person who identifies with the ruling class looks for government subsidies, political connections, favorable treatment from bureaucrats, and for government to hamper his competition.
A schoolteacher of the country class resents being forced to join a union, opposes the refusal to let parents choose their kids' schools, and wants to be judged by his/her effectiveness in teaching. In the next classroom a schoolteacher of the ruling class strongly supports union activity, rejects accountability for teachers (protecting the incompetent and ineffective), wants to prevent parents from having power over education, and claims most all problems in education can be solved by more taxpayer money.
A country class worker is aghast at how little honest, hard work yields in comparison to political connections to the right bureaucrat. Country class workers value competence, productivity, open resolution of disputes, competitive exams and evaluations, while the political class favors quotas, political connections and political correctness.
The country class strongly rejects the ruling class insistence that ordinary Americans are intellectually and humanly inferior. They want to manage their own lives and resent intrusion. If the ruling class is so smart why have they made such a mess of our country, our society and our lives?
The country class is patriotic while the ruling class wants to impose "world standards" in place of our Constitution and make us more like Europe.
The news media, educational establishment and Hollywood are increasingly being recognized for what they are, propaganda organs of the ruling class. As a result people are turning away, to Fox News and religious broadcasting, to home schooling, and to entertainment sources like Branson and Nashville.
X. Congruent Agendas?
The country class is very diverse with numerous interests and concerns. A small business person, who cannot hire lobbyists, worries about competitive disadvantage against larger firms whose representatives sit "at the table" with bureaucrats when industry standards, products specifications, subsidies, fees, etc. are discussed and regulations developed. All business people worry about interest rates, new statutory rights for unions, rising costs due to subsidies (e.g. ethanol) or large, unpredictable new costs (e.g. Obamacare). Doctors worry about bureaucrats in effect running their practices. And so on. But few can directly influence decisions about these things which so greatly impact their lives.
Local government is no longer able to respond to the will of the people. If parents want to influence the school board to improve education they soon find federal and state regulations and subsidies with strings attached prevent local decision-making. Ordinary workers are becoming aware that government employees make more money, have much better benefits, face less risk of unemployment, and yet produce far less value for the economy.
People who care greatly about the traditional family encounter all sorts of problems, some subtle, some not; married people face tax penalties, divorce is at the same time easy to get but also terribly costly and a nightmare experience (why get married?)... if you have clear ideas about raising your kids the school still goes ahead with its own agenda regarding sex education and abortion. People of religious faith feel persecuted. Thank God no one is being fed to the lions these days, but believers are second class citizens. Government grows, government power expands, public life is taking over every aspect of life, and religion is being systematically excluded from public life. Our community leaders cannot even mention Christmas at Christmastime without fear of lawsuits. The ruling class has a de facto policy of "aggressive, intolerant secularism."
Ordinary people with their various concerns are beginning to see there is one source for their problems, the ruling class, using government as its instrument.
XI. The Class Clash
Dr. Codevilla does not see the conflict being resolved soon or easily. The ruling class wants ever-increasing power, deference and perks. The country class wants to curtail their power, reduce their perks, and as far as deference, they believe our rulers are inept, corrupt, and malevolent. The rulers want the rest of us to shut up and obey them. Ordinary people want self-government and freedom from government oppression.
Compromise is unlikely and the outcome uncertain. The ruling class has a number of strong advantages. They are in the habit or ruling, the country is used to them being in positions of authority, they have the prestigious credentials, they have the sources of information and opinion in our society - news media, academia, the entertainment industry - on their side, and they have the Democratic Party, an experienced, disciplined vehicle for political power.
Two things the ruling class does not have are numbers; only a third of the population supports them, and their program is unsustainable. Ever increasing taxes, spending and debt is not a viable long term program.
The country class has serious weaknesses. It's disorganized, it has no political vehicle to express its wishes (the role of the Republican Party is uncertain), it is not in the habit of exercising power and leadership, and it has been routinely disparaged and ridiculed for decades by the propaganda organs of the ruling class.
What the country class has going for it is a majority of Americans, America's heritage of liberty and limited government, and people's basic desire for self-government, freedom, and to take responsibility for their own lives.
Dr. Codevilla counsels that for the American people to win, first their leaders must "attack the ruling class's fundamental claims to superior intellect and morality in ways that dispirit the target and hearten one's own." Priority 1 is fighting for our ideals in the battleground of public opinion.
Posted by rob at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)