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Conservatism, Meritocracy, and the New Elite
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…
I would argue that this self-evident truth is actually only half true. Certainly, all men are entitled to equal human dignity and equal standing before the law, but it is also self-evidently untrue that all men are created equal in ability.
Two of the major features of modern American conservatism are an affinity for meritocracy and an antipathy toward the elite. Throughout most of human history these have been complementary attitudes, as elite status has been due more to hereditary privilege than to personal achievement or ability. American conservatism has a long history of positioning itself as the champion of the self-made man and of wealth based on industriousness and productivity. This ideal is often contrasted against the indolent manor-born elite whose social and economic status and right to rule are due not to ability or industry, but to the accident of birth. But what if this dichotomy ceased to hold true? How should conservatives feel about an entrenched elite which achieves its status based on merit?
Much is been made about Charles Murray’s book, Coming Apart. Attention has tended to center on Murray’s identification of a new entrenched elite, increasingly hereditary, insular, and disconnected with the mainstream of American society. The fact of this increase in social stratification is important and certainly deserves the attention it has received. At the same time, an equally important issue raised by Murray’s work has been comparatively neglected: the fact that the rise of the new elite is the result of unprecedented levels of meritocracy in American society.
Very briefly, Murray’s explanation of the rise of the new elite is as follows:
In modern developed economies the economic value of human capital has risen to levels unprecedented in human civilization. Intelligence and education are the two greatest contributing factors to the development of human capital. Ever-increasing numbers of Americans are attending institutions of higher education and the American university system is highly effective in sorting for intelligence. Unlike a century ago, when social standing and/or affluence were the major predictive factors of admission to an elite university, admission to elite American educational institutions for the past two generations has been overwhelmingly a factor of intelligence and ability.
Intelligence is largely a factor of heredity. The child of two parents of above average intelligence is almost certain to be of above average intelligence himself, while the child of two imbeciles is overwhelmingly likely to continue the family tradition of imbecility. Throughout most of human history it was quite common for people of high intelligence to procreate with people of low intelligence, as people tend to pick their mate from among those with whom they interact and society was generally not segregated according to intelligence. The combined effect of mass participation in higher education and our system of higher education’s effectiveness at sorting for intelligence has profoundly altered the patterns of human interaction. Today, much more so than any time in the past, highly intelligent people of both sexes are attending elite universities and dominating the professions (finance, medicine, law, and academia) which both constitute the new elite and place a high value on intellectual ability. These people tend to find their mates among their highly intelligent new elite peers. Their offspring are overwhelmingly of high intelligence and, consequently, likely to join the ranks of the new elite themselves.
Thus, over the past several decades the American elite has become increasingly an elite not just in terms of social and economic standing but of intelligence and ability. This is not to say that there are no longer affluent dunces and impoverished geniuses (there certainly are), but it is an indisputable fact that economic status is unprecedentedly correlated with intellectual ability in postwar America. Nor is it to say that elite status is significantly less a factor of heredity than it has been in previous eras, but it is increasingly as much (if not more) a factor of inherited intellect as of inherited wealth.
So what is a conservative who has both an affinity for meritocracy and an antipathy toward elitism to make the new elite? It is common to hear conservatives extol the virtues of merit and ability and at the same time decry the fact that our society is governed by an Ivy League educated, insular elite. Rarely is it acknowledged that that elite obtained its status in large part due to its own merit.
It’s true that intelligence is not necessarily indicative of wisdom (Barack Obama is a good illustration of someone possessing the former trait, but not the latter), but increasingly it seems that a significant segment of the conservative base considers a degree from an elite university to be more a mark of Cain than a feather in one’s cap. I’m a huge fan of Scott Walker and I hope he runs for president, but that the fact that he’s a college dropout is considered by many conservatives to be one of his positive attributes seems to me to be a bit misguided.
I’d like to be clear that I’m not writing in defense of elitist snobbery. I’m not. I think the most pernicious aspect of the rise of the new meritocratic elite is that it has adopted the insularity and disdain for the common man which characterized aristocracies of the past. That said, I think the current strain of anti-elitism popular among the conservative base has gone a bit too far. Skepticism toward elite claims to a monopoly of knowledge or of entitlement to rule is a vital to the health of a republic, but that does not mean that we should make a virtue of mediocrity.
I recently had a conversation with a conservative activist who was highly critical of Ted Cruz (yes, Ted Cruz) on the grounds that he is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School and was thus a member of the oppressive elite. In support of his claim that an Ivy League education should be a disqualification for a conservative leader he cited the famous line about preferring to be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. He declined to attribute the quote to its origin: William F. Buckley, Jr. (St. John’s, Beaumont; the Millbrook School; Yale, Class of 1950, and a member of Skull and Bones).
Published in General
They are over-represented at elite universities relative to their proportion of the population.
“Yah, we don’t know what it is or who, exactly, has it. But it’s highly heritable.” I’m aware statistics sometimes work like this, but I don’t have to like it. Which may make me a better or worse statistician, depending on your point of view.
It’s possible, but if that is what conservatives suspect they’re generally mistaken.
Sounds like a personality issue to me. Borderline, even.
At least the classes at elite schools are academically rigorous, demanding on their own terms, no? Not necessarily. In the sciences, usually; in other disciplines, not so much. There are exceptions, of course, but professors and students have largely entered into what one observer called a “nonaggression pact.” Students are regarded by the institution as “customers,” people to be pandered to instead of challenged. Professors are rewarded for research, so they want to spend as little time on their classes as they can. The profession’s whole incentive structure is biased against teaching, and the more prestigious the school, the stronger the bias is likely to be. The result is higher marks for shoddier work.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118747/ivy-league-schools-are-overrated-send-your-kids-elsewhere
I had a friend at Princeton. He had the option of taking Organic Chemistry there by the prof who wrote the book, but instead took it at UMKC.
Great essay. My favorite part:
“Reading about George Washington or Calvin Coolidge (my political heroes), I’m not so much struck by their brilliance, but their discipline, integrity, and good judgment on important matters. ”
Probably. The list of borderline traits is large and vague enough to encompass pretty much everyone’s bad habits.
If I wished to nefariously discredit someone by slapping a “mentally ill” label on them, I’d choose “borderline”. Very hard to disprove. Plus it gives you permission to doubt the good faith of anything that person says or does.
ooh – but you’re getting into psychology, and I am a notorious psychology hater. Dare I call it a “hobby horse?” Damn, where’s Lee when you need her?
I hate to be so predictable, but in my line of work, everyone is deemed to have some sort of psych disorder. It’s because you’re under scrutiny, by professionals who desperately need an official problem to solve. Whenever I hear “oppositional defiant disorder,” I tune out every word that follows it. That is a load of nonsense. We’ve also come to rely on “ADD” diagnoses as the primary weapon in the feminist quest to eradicate boys.
Oop – one more. “PTSD” is criminal defendant speak for “world’s most versatile excuse,” in the same way that “low back pain” is the medical marijuana stoner’s “abra cadabra.”
Or as Vin Scully would say: “manure, manure, manure.”
Well sure, you can hate the false application of psychology without discounting the truths psychology may have legitimately discovered.
I agree with you to an extent, particularly about psychiatric disorders being overdiagnosed (there certainly are legitimate cases). The reason I mentioned BPD is that personality disorders are fundamentally about personality and you questioned the heritability of personality traits. A lot of study has been devoted to studying the heritability of BPD, much more so than on, say, the heritability of altruism.
I think part of our disagreement here is that we have different ideas of the purpose of higher education. I don’t think it’s fundamental purpose is to impart knowledge. I look at it as an investment. Elite institutions provide a much greater return on investment than do non-elite institutions. I’m not terribly concerned with whether that is due to better teaching or to the value of the brand that admission to and graduation from an elite institution confers.
I thought you thought the elite institutions of higher education were ruthlessly efficient machines for scouring the land for high-IQ youth to assimilate to the governing class, thereby (retroactively?) justifying the members of this class rigging the game to keep power in their own hands. Have I misunderstood?
Ah, but that’s only because when girls are difficult to manage, it’s fashionable to label them as BPD instead ;-)
But seriously, ADD/ADHD and BPD share a lot of overlapping traits. While I’m not convinced that BPD is a trait rather than a cluster of unrelated traits describing anything that might make a person (especially a person of the female persuasion) difficult to be around, having known many people (male and female) slapped with the ADD/ADHD label, I would describe them as having certain personality traits – not all of them bad.
If I had to offer a working definition of ADD/ADHD, it would be “that portion of the population whose behavior is most dramatically normalized by vigilance-increasing drugs”. Many smart people already have a high degree of vigilance, and the truly stupid can’t expect to become dramatically “smarter” by using a stimulant. But for the reasonably bright yet absentminded goofball, “ADD medicine” is conformity in a bottle – and I’m not at all convinced that’s such a bad thing.
I don’t think you’ve misunderstood (though I would not characterize my argument in the terms you have chosen) and I I don’t think I’ve been inconsistent. Elite schools are very effective at sorting for intelligence (actually selective schools generally are, not just the elite). At the same time, from the perspective of the student higher education is an investment. The more selective the school, the higher the expected return on investment.
Site is goofy on the iPad today’ but I wanted to say that my earlier comment lacked emphasis on the fact that these elites are selected. All groups which are self selecting have inbred quality issues and higher ed has more than most.
Add to to that the fact that intelligence is nature but getting into the best schools is also all about the nurture. Who your parents are, and what skills they have passed along and used to get you into a good school is a factor. Even who your parents are is a factor.
Sal, I’ve forged some of my prior comments into (what I hope is) a more coherent response here. It’s called “The Two Problems with Meritocracy” – the two problems being “merit” and “-ocracy”.
It seems like I’m spawning rebuttals left and right.
I’ll take a look at it now, but I might not be able to comment much until tomorrow.
You might not have to do any more than just skim it. Much of it was lifted from previous comments I’ve made here.
I’m on my way to the airport so I’ve only skimmed it on my phone. I’d like to provide a substantive response, but since my argument rests in part on being critical of democracy I’d like to mull the matter over a bit more than I’ve an opportunity to do at the moment. I’ll endeavor to get to it this evening, but tomorrow morning is more probable.
No problem. I’m off to a concert soon anyhow (or rather, the concert call, since I’m in it).
Hey Ryan, hold your (hobby) horses. I’m going through your previous posts (but not comments) for references to psychology but it’s taking a while. I put out a request for help on the whiner grapevine and, good news, John Podhoretz just tweeted to say he’ll help out after he deploys some nukes.
Too soon? :)
Personally, I’ve always felt lucky that I work so hard.
Had some points to make vis a vis luck, but I think I’ll do so in Midge’s thread. Was one of the legion of ideas worth discussing from this thread.
I don’t have any problem with dividing society into a group of elites who predominantly run things and nonelites who make up the bulk of the population so long as people are free to move between the two groups.
To that extent I dislike the scent of ivy on your resume being the secret handshake. If a meretricious teenager gets into the college selector and is whisked to the appropriate school it works, but if someone wants to break into said elite later in life I don’t want a less prestigious school barring the door.
Jumping back to the original post, I’d like to see Scott Walker become president with only a bachelor’s degree. Symbolically it’s good for the rest of us to see that it’s still possible. Also, all the other reasons why I’d like to see Scott Walker president.
Great post! There are 2 issues. If the academe were intellectually diverse there would be no conservative backlash against the intellectual elite. The more important issue is the entrenchment of this new elite as an oligarchy that increasingly arrogates to itself more power and wealth at the expense of the non-elite.
We do know the solution! The Founders of our Republic understood that power needed to be diluted among separate branches as well as limited in scope. And that is the key. As the administrative state has grown power it is still somewhat diluted but it has become almost unlimited in its intrusion into our lives. Aristocratic and oligarchic elites always gravitate to power and justify its use for their own benefit.
A limited state mitigates the effects of self-aggrandizing elites because they can only exercise limited powers. What is needed is a re-education of our populace on the purposes and virtues of limited government and personal responsibility without which a free people cannot rule themselves.
And Jefferson himself understood that. I can’t find the exact quote, but Harry Jaffa talked about Jefferson as saying something like “Sir Isaac Newton may be my superior in every respect, but that gives him no claim to my person or property.” He understood that folks would achieve far different things in life, but the Declaration is making clear that we’re all equal humans as to rights, and inherent value.
-In Coming Apart, it seemed that to me that Murray was saying that while the achievement gap is getting worse, and some of that is due to our current “knowledge-driven” economy, that things wouldn’t be nearly as a bad for a Fishtown that embraced certain virtues (hard work, self-discipline, delayed gratification, babies after marriage, etc.) He then criticizes the Belmontans for not preaching what they practice. He even makes a pitch for the importance of church in the life of the community. I don’t know if that counts as social science, but it seems reasonable to me.
-Murray’s point about college admissions is that the SAT has become a de facto proxy for an IQ test, and laments that it has become perhaps the only one valued by employers, since discrimination and disparate impact laws/court rulings have made it all but impossible for employers to just test applicants for their knowledge/aptitude for a given job. He talks quite a bit about the fact that most high-tech jobs don’t, or shouldn’t, require a college degree (this is true), but people are being aced out of them by our stupid, stupid legal regime.
-From everything I’ve read, it seems that the real value (or a very important secondary value) of an Ivy/near Ivy degree (Stanford, Berkeley, etc.) is the contacts one makes. And that doesn’t have much bearing on ability, unless cultivating contacts is counted as such. Which I guess it is, since we all know people who are wizards at it.