Liberal Elites

Steven Hayward from the April 1995 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Lasch doesn't like meritocracy, though he stops short of the common invective that all success is due to luck or sinister calculation. He is really annoyed at the mobility of the elites made possible by modern markets and technology. Whereas old money elites tended to be rooted in some local place, the new elites are rootless cosmopolitans who have more in common with their Asian and European commercial partners than with their American neighbors. The implication is that liberal guilt is a fine thing, and the elitism that Lasch, and to a more limited extent Henry, would obviously approve is the elitism of the Kennedy family: It's OK to make a pile as long as you feel guilty and "give back" other people's money.

Lasch doesn't formulate actual public policies, but he has always made a better Jeremiah than a Moses. The same complaint cannot be made of Henry. Henry not only offers specific criteria for recognizing a superior culture, he also offers the radical suggestion that the number of students who receive a college education be cut nearly in half. His favorite target for the education ax are the "community" colleges, which, he notes, used to be called "junior" colleges. And he argues that tenure for college faculty should be abolished: "Competing for one's job on an on-going basis could introduce a little more healthy elitism into the professorial lifestyle." If acerbic barbs about putting bones in noses don't set off the chattering class, this idea surely will. Henry is surely right, as David Frum has also argued recently, that much of the egalitarian excess of our time derives its energy from the bloated higher-education establishment.

While both books' criticisms about egalitarianism are most welcome, what's missing is a recognition that contemporary liberalism paved the way for our current condition by having no immune system to ward off the tendency toward extremism. It needs to be remembered that it was precisely because of the liberal collaboration with the crusade for the redistribution of income that the subsequent absurdities of radical egalitarianism became possible.

There is little recognition that classical liberal warnings about the poisonous effects of egalitarianism were right and should have been heeded decades ago. Henry only grudgingly admits that "even lifelong liberals of an elitist bent are forced to find common cause with conservatives" on these issues. But it is probably churlish to demand mea culpas, and the long-suffering friends of liberty should perhaps celebrate newfound allies against the relentless levelling current of our time. It is bad form to check the other fellow's dog tags in the foxhole while the battle rages. (Besides, these guys could use some friendly air cover: Since both Henry and Lasch died shortly before their books were released, we can expect the left to dismiss both books as being the products of "dead white American males.")

The real defect in Henry's argument is not simply that it is more of an attack on egalitarianism than it is a defense of elitism, but that his defense of elitism seems to be a defense of elitism for elitism's sake, rather than an argument that elitism can represent a standard of excellence that is good and defensible in itself. The success of Bill Bennett's Book of Virtues offers evidence that such a defense would find a wide and eager audience.

Henry's criteria for a superior culture include liberty, respect for science and art, a comfortable middle-class existence, recognition of hierarchy and authority, and a useful basis for perceiving the differ-ence between mediocrity and excellence. But for the real thing, for "elitism with-out tears or guilt," so to speak, readers should go back to Aristotle's Ethics.

Comments

nfl jerseys|11.17.10 @ 1:30AM|#

dthdd

log in or register to reply

سهمي|12.11.10 @ 4:36PM|#

asgsag

log in or register to reply