The conservatives are wrong on the history. The original US ideal was, in fact, much closer to equality of outcomes than proponents of opportunity, merit, and social mobility would have you believe. …Funny how you cannot cite any proof of this, Sohrab.
What?
Worth checking out this publication’s “about” page to see where they’re coming from:
They have an interesting and unusual perspective. This Ahmari guy is one of their founding senior editors. His previous work was with the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal but he seems to have parted ways with the modern conservative mainstream to some degree and is exploring a new path.
They seem to be social conservatives who believe in a redistributive social-democratic model that is egalitarian but not leftist. My guess is they would mostly approve of, say, the way that Denmark does things. IOW they would align fairly well with European conservatives and especially Scandinavian conservatives. But they would consider themselves rooted in American political tradition, especially the egalitarianism expressed in Thomas Jefferson as pointed to in this piece.
The writer explains that meritocracy is not how the nation was founded but then seems to go on to invalidate his own point barring the tenuous claim that higher education circulates elites. I would argue this is true in “elite” schools such as the Ivies, but QUALITY educational availability lends to much better social outcomes when we grade on actual ability, not some virtue signaling Bell curve where you can be as illiterate as a mountain goat but still walk across the stage to receive a piece of paper comparable in assumed worth as someone who eschewed partying and skirt chasing for a degree in a hard science.
The writer’s premise, that Americans are better invested in meritocratic ends when they have “skin in the game” has been a stalking horse for generations now. We stripped away the need to be a landowner to vote, for instance, in the interest of fairness. Now millions of people vote with no interest or need to be concerned about a political platform, because raising taxes doesn’t impact them. They just vote a party line or for the individual who promises them the most stuff. Alexander Fraser Tytler warned us about this:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling didn’t amount to much of anything, if we’re being honest. Universities are going to continue to figure out ways to admit students based on virtue vs. ability. They are promised largesse from our government and its agents in the interest of maintaining “social equity,” and so that Indian boy with a 1600 SAT and perfect extracurriculars still won’t be admitted to Harvard, Yale, or even MIT, because let’s face it: liberals are racist, and if you aren’t part of the current protected social order, you’re a pariah. It’s never about equality. It’s about how you can benefit a government agent in the long term. Virtue signaling uber alles.
Equality of outcome? That depends on the choices you make. Affirmative Action is all about punishing good choices and rewarding bad ones.
This yob cites a lefty prof to boost his nonsense
That’s what one gets for going to Harvard
Justifying the “race to the bottom” social model with a lot of fancy language.
That isn't what social mobility is about, except in rare cases, and the author is dishonest to assume that INLY movement from poverty to wealth counts.
Social mobility more commonly means that the children of working class people can advance to the middle class, and smart and ambitious children of middle class can attain wealth.
6 generations???Where did this stat come from? Why must I reckon with a made up statistic?
“newfangled progressive efforts to achieve “equality of outcomes”...newfangled it isn’t. The progressives have been working at this for quite some time. Also, the progressives aren’t really looking for “equality of outcomes” but the complete erasure of one segment of the human race in education, jobs and authority...white males. And conservatives of any race. It is racism by progressives and I believe they know it and don’t care.