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A Response to My Friend Sal, the Dirty Elitist
When I was a sophomore in college, I took a class on Russian Politics. It got me hooked and I ended up with something of an unofficial (because it didn’t exist) minor. In the first class, the professor asked whether the American Revolution really qualified as a revolution. I honestly don’t recall what the general consensus was at the time, but recently I have been thinking about that question. I am half-inclined to say that the American Revolution was the only true revolution. I say that because, in one sense, it was an unnatural revolution. It was a revolution of thought, disenfranchising an authority but, unlike the various Russian and French revolutions, not replacing it with another, worse, authority. That’s what I mean by ‘unnatural’: it was the sort of revolution that simply doesn’t happen.
Other revolutions are easy — they just follow the contours of human nature. We always root for the underdog because virtually all of us are underdogs. There is always someone with privilege. In baseball, half of the players have recognizable names because their fathers were players. Is this unfair? Hard to say. But it is undeniable that there is an advantage. We’ve all experienced it in our own lives. We all know (or some of us might be) people whose parents paid for their educations, put them in quality schools, paid for tutoring and ensured that they got into good colleges, good graduate schools, etc. For most Ivy-Leaguers, for example, it would be pretty difficult to defend against this charge. They’ll take the one or two rags-to-riches examples and say they’ve proven you wrong — but they’re usually not the example. Is it any wonder that people are taken in by the idea of affirmative action? It is a pretty weak answer when conservatives say that there is equal opportunity – because there isn’t. There is equal legal opportunity, but a fat lot of good that does the guy with no money and no family.
We’ve been talking about elitism lately. It is a difficult situation because, really, the liberals are right. Take Ricochet, for example. What a wonderful premise; this site is based on the idea that conservatives are smart, and that conversation among every-day conservatives is just as invigorating as the conversation you hear from any of our talking heads. But what of our pundits? Ever see them on the Member Feed? Ever see them commenting, even on their own articles? Nope. Well… some are exceptions, which is a real testament to the truth of conservatism. Justified elitism has the major downfall of tending to go to one’s head, of leading to dismissiveness and condescension.
Yes – justified elitism: it can be pretty obnoxious talking down to the under-informed. You sometimes have to start at their level. You cannot assume that they’ve devoted their lives to learning all of the facts and history. Just when you start trying to talk to them, you realize that they didn’t actually read The Wealth of Nations. So much easier to talk, to write, and to have them just listen.
Goodness, I experience this plenty in my own life. I’m a lawyer. I get talked down to all the time. When I go to the doctor’s office, I don’t know everything that’s going on – but I want to know. So I ask tons of questions. I probe and I make conversation. It takes a lot of patience, because the doctor cannot make assumptions. When I go to an orchard, it is the same thing. I ask the farmer about his apples, and I wonder whether I have the right mix for the cider I want to make. I ask about strains and about hybrids. It takes a lot of patience to talk to a lawyer who doesn’t know anything about farming. When I go to the mechanic, I ask about my brake shoes and about the struts on my car – does that noise mean something is loose? It takes a lot of patience to explain these things to a lawyer who tucks his tie into his pocket so that he doesn’t get grease on it.
Politics is strange like that. Politicians peddle in opinions, don’t they? But they aren’t doctors or mechanics or farmers. They’re not just peddling in opinions, but in judgments. They want to manage, but, unfortunately for them, our disagreement is not about whether they are competent to manage but whether we want to be managed in the first place. And that is why we lose.
Conservatives are walking proof that the liberals are right. Even our Tea Party rebels – who include Harvard Law grads and Supreme Court clerks amongst their ranks – tend to come from the elite. These are people who wouldn’t talk to you except to beg for your vote. I recently remarked to a friend that the only sort of politician I will enthusiastically vote for is the one who will arrive in DC and promptly fire himself. I don’t want to be governed. It is precisely why we had that stupid revolution in the first place. We actually got together a group of men who were willing to congregate at the capital only to castrate themselves. They left things too vague, however, and the constitution we’ve got hasn’t just become a living organism, it’s become a cancerous one.
In response, we gather our own elite. We send our best and our brightest to go argue with their best and their brightest, but they find they have more in common with each other than with us. They’re all ‘experts.’ Even conservatives are stratified. It doesn’t take a Harvard education to say “hands off,” but when the rubes gather to say it they’re shouted down by the experts. Those experts prove that the liberals are right – the elitists with power may say all the right things, but, in the end, they’re going to protect their positions, their status, and their livelihood.
The problem with conservatives is that our revolution has to be only half a revolution. We can’t rely on inequality to foment grievance and pit the lowly against the elite. All that ever does is replace one elite with another. It never removes the throne, it only changes the ruler. The feminist movement, the civil rights movement, unions, the LGBT movement, etc. – they start out as appeals to actual inequality, but they eventually settle in as empowerment movements, aimed at flipping the power rather than removing it. So we have to have a half-revolution. We accept inequality, we accept elitism, we accept those experts and those people who would never condescend to mix it up with the dirty folk. We allow for movement up and down, knowing that this moves everyone up in the long run. But we have to tear down the throne itself – so that the experts cannot rule us. And that is really hard to do, because that throne is just so tempting and there are just so many people to resent for all their privilege.
But looking back, it would seem that we tried some 200-odd years ago. Frankly, I don’t think it’s going to work.
Published in General
Marci- There is more to succeeding academically than memory. It’s aso worth noting that memory is pretty strongly correlated to intelligence.
I think highly of Bush the Elder and I’m not necessarily disputing your claim that he is more intelligent than Clinton (I don’t have an opinion either way), but you seem to be suggesting that Bush’s military service is evidence of his superior intellect. I hope I’ve misunderstood. Could you elaborate a bit why you consider Bush to be smarter than Clinton and not just a better president or person?
I, belatedly, see that this post has been promoted. I’d like to congratulate Ryan on his entrée into Ricochet’s elite, even if he had to ride my coattails to achieve it.
Wasn’t that clever of him to phrase the title as a direct response to yours even though it wasn’t mentioned in the essay?
It’s a book I wanted to write years ago. Ugh.
It is impossible to evaluate language ability in relation to intelligence.
Human judgment is a result of a lot of mental forces occurring simultaneously.
And, yes, I know that memory is a huge component of intelligence. Which is part of my problem with the way it is usually measured. Because there is a motivation factor involved in memory, except for that rare group of people who have photographic memories.
For me to make a case that Bush 41 is more intelligent than Clinton, I’d have to define “intelligence.” Hmmm.
Okay. Try this:
If I understand what Clinton says, does that make me as intelligent as he is?
If I can answer questions accurately about what Clinton says, does that make me as intelligent as he is?
If I can remember what Clinton just said, does that make me as intelligent as he is?
We all assume that what people say or write in any given moment is only the tip of the mental iceberg. With Clinton, there is no iceberg. With George Bush 41, there is an actual iceberg.
Give the people what they want: all Sal, all the time.
Why do you think that? I’ve heard a number of people who know him say that Clinton is shallow, but the shallowness is regarding conviction, not intelligence. I’m unaware of anyone with personal knowledge of the man who has stated that he is is anything but highly intelligent.
By now he probably is somewhat intelligent. He sat in the Oval Office for eight years, an experience that I have not had. That’s why these are good questions. You would assume since I have not had Clinton’s experiences that even if I remembered what he just said, I’m not as intelligent.
Ryan- My point is not to criticize Cruz or to praise Kerry. Is that criticizing Kerry or Clinton on these particular grounds is hypocritical unless you are similarly willing to criticize Cruz.
So what is intelligence? It is pretty indefinable. But I believe there is a motivation component, a will to understand something deeply and come to a productive solution to a problem that sets true intelligence apart from a simple language-imagination ability.
Something outside yourself has to matter in order to be truly intelligent.
Sorry, I posted and then went away, I have this thing called life I have to attend to now and then. I don’t necessarily know whether or not Cruz was making political decisions in high school. We might as well throw in Rubio too as a lifelong politician. I would vote for either but with the additional misgivings that they are lawyers (sorry, Ryan) and have been in congress. My ideal candidate is a non-lawyer who has held a high executive position, has not been
contaminated by congress and came to politics late in life after being asked to do so by others. — Eisenhower and Reagan. The Bushes (41 an 43) and Romney met some of those conditions
Marci- I think you’re missing the mark to the extent that you are equating experience with intelligence. Wisdom is probably largely a function of experience, but intelligence is not. Being president does not make someone smarter, though it certainly broadens his experience.
Not having met either of you, I really don’t feel qualified to express an opinion on your intelligence relative to Bill Clinton’s, but everything I know about Bill Clinton suggests he is highly intelligent (whatever his other failings happen to be). For what it’s worth, you strike me as highly intelligent as well.
Soon to be written post
A Meh to My Friend Ryan M, the Clean Stet-ist*
*We all know that Ryan M has no idea what Dele means. :-)
I’ve been trying to convince my three kids of this, . . . :)
I think a career politician is important. I think Ronald Reagan was a career politician. As an actor, union president, governor, and then president he learned how to work with people and make compromises. It is a valuable skill that it is often denigrate. Clinton, Johnson, and others for better or worse knew how to get things done. When the conservatives fail to see this they are naive. Good intentions only get you so far. You need core competency. Part of that is being a professional politician.
Much as I value your light-hearted shennanigans, I really do enjoy your substantive contributions.
Thanks, Mike. I won’t say I understand, that would be going a bit too far – but I think I’ve got a glimmer of a hint of the shadow of what you may heave been getting at … stuff to think about.
Coattails? I consider them reins. Giddyup.
Let’s not get carried away with these plurals.
Boy, are you testy. Ryan M, no one blames you for being the way you are. So you are not part of the elite and you have to ride the coattails of Sal. It’s okay. We really don’t expect that much out of you.
I consider this comment as one of my substantive ones.
I confess I’m a fan of Howard Gardner and his work on education and the eight kinds of intelligence. For me, the problem in education is that educators are trying to guess learning potential, for commendable and practical reasons. However, I don’t think the conventional IQ tests are adequate to that task. And these do a lot of harm in terms of discouraging people.