Reflections: Elite Lite

If the current consternation among Democrats – I speak of the quandary presented to many by the necessity of choosing between Hillary and Obama – is indicative of anything, it is indicative of the fact that, with regard to class, we Americans don’t know wtf we are. Our children will grow up confused by the contradictory ways in which we use words to characterize, and thus dismiss as viable choices, our political opponents. Let’s take a look at two words that have acquired significant political weight from being distorted and abused by our peculiarly American form of Newspeak: “middle-class” and “elite.”

As a card-carrying Effete Intellectual Snob, I track the manipulative, merino-herding mischief being done through usage of these terms by the political class back to our loss of the term “bourgeoisie” and its accompanying concepts of quality and class. There was a time when H.L. Mencken could coin the term “booboisie” and score points against his ideological opposition: As a nationally syndicated columnist and book author, he notably attacked ignorance, intolerance, "frauds", fundamentalist Christianity and the "Booboisie," his word for the ignorant middle classes. No more. Today, every American, no matter how grease-stained, no matter how privileged by birth, wants to be considered “middle-class.” The neologisms coming into currency today, deployed by Madison Avenue-trained political consultants of every hue in the political spectrum, are designed to deconstruct the traditional connotations of the words “middle-class” and “elite” in favor of an elusive and illusory concept of egalitarianism which has no stable definition, because it represents no objective reality. This is also what is going on when Hillary Clinton, in her menopausal desperation, tries to label bi-racial, single parent, up-by-his-bootstraps, super-achiever, Barack Obama, as the purveyor of an “elitist” message.

Everybody wants to be middle-class, but nobody wants to be a “bourgeois.” Be that as it may, a bourgeois is nothing other than a member of the middle-class. Accordingly, as the Wikipedia article states: In common usage the term has pejorative connotations suggesting either undeserved wealth, or lifestyles, tastes, and opinions that lack the sophistication of the rich or the authenticity of the intellectual or the poor. It is rare for people in the English speaking world to identify themselves as members of the bourgeoisie, although many self-identify as middle class. To keep things simple, the battered Webster’s pocket dictionary that I got free (along with a thesaurus) for subscribing to Time Magazine many years ago, and still use multiple times-per-day (along the Time subscription lapsed many moons ago), defines “bourgeoisie” as: the social class between the very wealthy and the working class; middle class. Middle class—there you go. The same dog-eared tome defines the adjectival form of “bourgeois” thusly: of the bourgeoisie: used variously to mean conventional, smug, respectable, etc. “Smug,” huh? In other words, to be bourgeois, which is to be middle-class, is to be as Obama has been called “elitist” by Hillary Clinton for allegedly being. As will become clear below, Obama is being accused of acting uppity-classy, as demonstrated by his blatantly middle-classy behavior. Go figure.

It is even more hypocritical when the forces of conservatism who will be backing John McCain throw the word “elitist” around as a pejorative term. Conservatives are not egalitarians and never have been. They represent the interests of the national moneyed, entrepreneurial, social, and cognitive elite and always have. Their American guru, Russell Kirk, says in his seminal work, The Conservative Mind: “I think that there are six canons of conservative thought.”

The third of these six canons reads: Conviction that civilized society needs orders and classes, as against the notion of a “classless society.” With reason, conservatives have been called “the party of order.” If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.

So Kirk preaches that egalitarianism is the road to oligarchy. Evidently, then, those at the top of the hierarchy constructed by the free play of those “natural distinctions” are not to be oligarchs. An oligarchy, as defined in part by the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary is: Government by the few: a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also : a group exercising such control: an organization under oligarchic control;... . Is not this Kirkian upper-class, if it is not to be the embodiment of an oligarchy, accurately characterized, then, as an elite? Merriam-Webster on-line defines elite as: The choice part: the socially superior part of society: a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence: a member of such an elite;… . Every fan of the NCAA national basketball tournament knows that to make it to the “Elite Eight” is a good thing: “elite” is a positive adjective. And a positive noun. So, when enthusiastically hierarchical conservatives use the word “elite” as pejorative they are cynically and blatantly playing to the cheap seats. Their deployment of this false egalitarianism is nothing but rabble-rousing of the crassest kind.

God help the bleating merinooisie.

WWWtW-Watch #6: You Say Re-van-chist, I Say Re-vahn-chist

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

What follows will not be a radical criticism of the WWWtW post cited below, but will rather ponder the implications of the use of the word “state” in that post by author, Maximos, and how it relates to concepts of “society” and “government” and “nation.” I will be attempting to combine here my intention to initiate some talk about conservative guru, Russell Kirk, with my on-going critique of the concept of a “public orthodoxy” as proposed at WWWtW. Don’t be expecting a whole lot of coherence, as my thoughts are all over the ballpark.

In the comments section of WWWtW-Watch #5, Tom said:

I'd say it's reasonable to distinguish between "society" and "government”.

I'd also want to distinguish between a "public orthodoxy" enforced by the society and one enforced by the government. (Come to think of it, I want everyone else to make that distinction, too. Especially the government.)

My reply was that I did not see how “society” could enforce a “public orthodoxy” without resort to governmental power.

But, exactly what is meant by “society” in this context? The United States of America is a nation that has been characterized as The Great Melting Pot. In many respects, this has been a valid description. But America also remains, due to continuing waves of immigration, a nation comprised of a number of subcultures in various stages of assimilation and coexisting in an often uneven state of mutual acceptance. That being the case, what forms the core of American society? I would say that it is the Constitution, and only the Constitution.

In the excerpt below, WWWtW author Maximos seems to indicate that the crucially operative dichotomy is not that between society and government, but rather that between “nation” and “state.” Maximos, I surmise, is an avowed nationalist. Those individuals who disagree with his favored policies, whether foreign or domestic, one gathers, are “statists.” That which is identified as the “nation” seems to be an amalgam of “society” (presumably the entity that would embody any “public orthodoxy”) plus the geographical entity found within our national borders. The ”state”, then, would be an unholy alliance of the political and economic powers-that-be. Maximos writes:

A decadent state, inclusive of the political and economic establishments of a country, will war against the nation over which it rules, seeking to efface the world-image that has nourished and sustained it - and will employ the nationalisms of others in the process.

Maximos, as I understand him, is speaking here of the lack of will on the part of “the state” to stem the tide of illegal immigration across our southern border. He characterizes these elements as Mexican “revanchists.” Presumably, it is “society’ that is most at risk from this invasion; and as goes society, so goes “the nation.”

As a benighted lefty attempting to get all of these conservative ducks in a row, the better to conduct an accurate taxonomy of them, I have been looking into the thought of that ideological saint of the WWWTW team (see archives, April 24, 2007), Russell Kirk. In the opening chapter of his seminal work, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (entitled “The Idea of Conservatism”), Kirk outlines his “six canons of conservative thought.”

In the first of these canons, Kirk provides magisterial authority for the WWWtW call for a “public orthodoxy” by positing a “Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience.” He goes on to say: “Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems.” In the second canon, Kirk decries egalitarianism and utilitarianism. We may return to those issues in a subsequent post. But in the third of his six canons, on which I want to focus here, he adds another layer of meaning to the mysterious term “society,” by asserting his “Conviction that a civilized society requires orders and classes. As against the notion of a “classless society.”

Hmmm. It would seem to me that, in America, the horse is pretty much out of the barn in terms of any kind of permanent caste system. What would be the basis of that which Kirk has in mind here? Economic level? Educational/cultural attainment? Heredity? A combination of all of these? Don’t we have that now, pretty much? Isn’t the opportunity for upward mobility both the pride of our nation and the aspiration that every father has for his son? What’s the beef?

I have to ask here: wouldn’t some kind of economic egalitarianism that would eliminate the extremes of both wealth and poverty, still leave open the possibility of a de facto “class system” based on educational and cultural attainments, especially in the sciences and in the fine arts?

And, to get back to WWWtW and the idea of a “public orthodoxy”—I ask again: why does a class system—even though it admits of a hypothetical cultural/moral elite--automatically empower that elite to decide what the “others” may read, think, and discuss in a public forum? I don’t find such a power anywhere in the Constitution. In fact, I believe that the Constitution proscribes any group having that kind of power.

I’m not sure that I’ve connected many dots here... Any thoughts?

Oh, the title of this post? I was amused at the horror expressed by Maximos at the revanchism expressed by the Mexican official in the video clip embedded in the post in question, as compared to his strident endorsement in the February 22, 2008 post, "Reflections on Kosovo, In the Wake of Independence” (you’ll need to scroll down to it in the archives) of the instantaneous Serbian revanchist aspirations with regard to Kosovo. I guess it’s all a matter of whose Christian ox is being gored by what Muslim bull?