Sun Rises for First Time in History
Elite columnist Michael Barone has one of those awkward anti-elites columns you read from time to time, which puts forth the proofless proposition that those E-word people, really, for the first time in history, are insufficiently patriotic. Sample:
"America's business, professional, intellectual, and academic elites," writes Samuel Huntington in his 2004 book Who Are We? have "attitudes and behavior [that] contrast with the overwhelming patriotism and nationalistic identification with their country of the American public…. They abandon commitment to their nation and their fellow citizens and argue the moral superiority of identifying with humanity at large." He believes that this gap between transnational elites and the patriotic public is growing. Huntington knows whereof he speaks: He's been at Harvard for more than half a century.
New elites. This gap is something new in our history. Franklin Roosevelt spoke fluent French and German and worked to create the United Nations, but no one doubted that his allegiance was to America above all.
Well, no one except for, um, the most powerful newspaper publisher in American history. Here's an excerpt from an Oct. 1, 1936 editorial by William Randolph Hearst:
Mr. Roosevelt declares that he is not a Communist, but the Communists say he is one. The Communists ought to know. Every cow knows its own calf…. The Communists may be misguided in many ways, but they are at least sincere…. They hail Mr. Roosevelt as a comrade. Stalin hails him, and asks the Communists to support him.
Quote courtesy of David Nasaw's fine biography, The Chief.
The day that elites aren't denounced on a daily basis—by fellow elites whose politics differ—as shifty, disloyal internationalists, is the day history truly will have been made. "Cosmopolitan" wasn't always just a bad drink. (Barone link via InstaPundit.)