Posted on 01/15/2010 9:00:25 AM PST by betty boop
David Brooks notes that in the last year, something dire has happened: The public has turned decisively against the "educated classes" and all of their works. At the same time, it has also moved against Barack Obama, who began his term with approval ratings that bumped up against 70, and have now sunk to the high to mid-40s, with "strongly disapprove" ratings that rival those of George W. Bush at his worst.
It has also moved strongly against his — and the educated classes' — ideas. It is more pro-life, more anti-climate change, more free market, less statist, more inclined to favor "harsh" measures against terrorism suspects, more in favor of "waterboarding" the terrorist caught in the brief-bombing effort, more opposed to the closing of Guantanamo Bay.
While the liberal Left controls the White House along with both houses of Congress, the country it governs has moved to the Right. These phenomena are all interrelated: The country is moving Right in reaction to Obama's theories of governance, and Obama and the educated class are one and the same.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Obama_s-education-of-little-use-to-his-presidency-8756295-81272472.html#ixzz0chWlPFSN
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
The Educated Class is those with Ivy League degrees who have stayed in the Academy or who have entered politics and remain Left. All others are Bourgeois and/or Rubes or Enemies.
I agree completely. Only a complete moron could write this:
He compared him to Burke in his subtle complexity.
So that's what being part of the "educated class" means, you can't tell the difference between a communist and a Rockingham Whig!
I think in this case "educated class" is a code word for "people who got us into this pickle".
So tell me, Myrddin, do you expect similar social consequences as occurred in Cambodia from a "decisive turn against the educated classes" will/would ever occur here in America?
If not, then what is the point of your allusion to Pol Pot?
Never forget that it was a "progressive" ideologue seeking to destroy political opposition and raze the settled ways of traditional Cambodian society unto rubble (to "clear the decks" for his unchallengeable power) that caused the destruction of the educated classes in Cambodia. After all, they were the carriers of historical Cambodian tradition from one generation to the next.... As such, they had to be destroyed. ("You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs." — Lenin)
In Pol Pot's book, the price of Progress required the destruction of all "cultural resistance...." Over two million Cambodians were slaughtered to secure this result.
Do you worry that members of the (unorganized) Tea Party Movement will mount a successful (bloody) coup against the educrats, technocrats, and bureaucrats that fill the ranks of the Obama administration?
I understand David Brooks was gratified that the type of person that Obama chose to surround himself with in office held advanced degrees from the most prestigious institutions in the nation. Almost all of his appointees do. Thus we are to believe that we have highly intelligent people "in charge."
But from my point of view, a good many of these academic types are morons (once you get them out of their narrow "specialty" — i.e., many of them really never have learned how to think critically, just to regurgitate the "sacred received texts" of their speciality); and in some cases, even possibly certifiably insane. WRT these latter, their utter contempt for settled American ways and enduring values to me bespeaks their utter unfitness for office. Their contempt for the Constitution makes them dangerous — and unfortunately, that starts in the Oval Office....
A hermetic seal has been thrown around his entire post-high school education. We don't know what his major was, what classes he took or what his GPA was.
That’s exactly right—while the “elite” Harvard/Yale” crowd never did “know best” across the board—you can’t compare the generations of highly educated men who came from those and similar institutions, many of them devout men of God, who loved their country and helped to make it the greatest in the world, who volunteered for the cause of freedom and to defend America in war after war, to the many pathetic douchebags who came out of those institutions for the past 40 years hell-bent on undermining the country while greedily grabbing their share of the pie they feel entitled to-many with an intelligence level and education, even after Hah-Vud, equal to or less than what a Catholic high school grad from 1950 had.
As for BO and the Worst Lady—without affirmative action, they wouldn’t have lasted a semester back when Harvard and Princeton were really Harvard and Princeton.
Thank you oh so very much for your insights, dearest sister in Christ!
ping
Let me also differentiate between the "educated class" and the leftist, academic, elitist snobs that infest our government. The latter group is deserving of nothing but scorn. They damage our country at every turn. The "educated class" that I'm concerned about is that group that gets up every morning to run our businesses and design the next generation widgets.
They both sound less educated than the average junior high school student. Their power and position was purchased. Obama's allegiance is to the person(s) who paid to put him in his current position.
That's a really good question, colorado tanker. All facts about the Usurper-in-Chief's past have been hermetically sealed, including the histories of his grandparents, the Dunhams. Of course, as you know that includes all his school records, and just about everything else....
It's curious to recall that several weeks back I read an article here at FR that quoted a member of the Columbia University International Relations B.S. program, Class of 1982 (or was it '84? — I don't recall at this moment, but I do note that Wikipedia no longer gives dates for Obama's degrees as earned). Anyhoot, this respondent claimed that Barack Obama, based on his own statements, would have been in his class — but he claimed to have checked with his class members, and none of them remembers a "Barry Obama" or "Barry Soetero." That would be very strange, to say the least; since this group would have been in classes together throughout their four-year degree program. I don't now recall this gentleman's name — unfortunately.
[If anybody recalls and still has a link to this story, I'd be so grateful if you'd post it here!]
Notwithstanding, I consider the Usurper-in-Chief to be a "highly-educated" person: He has been educated by, among other persons, Hegel; Darwin; Marx; Machiavelli; Gramsci; Cloward/Pivens; Alinsky; Frank Marshall Davis; the Rev. Jeremiah Wright; Bill Ayers; et al. He is a Left Progressive, and just as "far-Left" radical as one can be, up to and including Black nationalist sympathies. (E.g., his Justice Dept. gives the Black Panthers a pass on voter intimidation charges, a criminal complaint — and the Congress goes along!!!) So much for the "healer, not a divider" president....
It is obvious that Obama is following the Alinsky playbook in, for instance, demonizing the Banks. That entire playbook depends on carving people into different interest groups, and then pitting the different groups against each other. E.g., union workers vs. rich bankers.... The idea is to create so much controversy and chaos that the entire society is undermined....
In short, the basic idea is you can't "solve" problems you haven't "created first."
Or: "Never let a good crisis to to waste."
By these means, he is trying to "realize" a Second (or alternative) Reality in America. The only way he can do that is to destroy the First Reality — our common culture, values, principles, the ethos of the American people, our fundamental rule of law, the Constitution — in order to create as much social chaos as possible, and then seek to present himself as the "solution" to all the social discord/dislocation problems he has worked so assiduously to create in the first place.
Kiddos, we're in the grip of a massive con game....
It’s just speculation, but my theory is Barry majored in ethnic studies (somewhere!) with a mediocre GPA, was an affirmative action baby at Harvard with a mediocre GPA and was put on law review by affirmative action. That’s stuff they really, really wouldn’t want to be public.
No, a graduate degree in the "social sciences" (and occasionally the physical sciences)
Whew. I'm relieved. I misunderstood you at first, Myrddin!
Of course, in the above remarks you are describing the Usurper-in-Chief's entire operating plan.
Of course Khmer-Rouge-style thugs can be found in all of Obama's organized enablers, from ACORN, SEIU, to (if Obama's wishes were to come true), AmeriCorps....
And what do you make of the recent Executive Order establishing a "Governor's Council" — which I'll take a flyer and define as follows: One-fifth of the states will be used as a fulcrum point that Obama's project of eliminating American constitutional liberties will use to exert leverage against 100% of the states, in ways which spread federal authority and control over the several sovereign states in ways that the Tenth Amendment utterly forbids.
I agree with your description of the "educated class" — they are the ones who get up every morning in America, and get the business of America done. On the other hand, the "leftist, academic, elitist snobs that infest our government" — in their seemingly infinite arrogance — are trying to make that business just as difficult as possible to conduct. They steal from (relentlessly impoverish) the productive, intelligent, creative sectors of our society, cultural and economic, to buy votes from robot-like couch potatoes who always have their mouths open (like baby birds, crying to be fed by momma bird) and their hands out. ("When do I get my refrigerator?")
Obama and his minions intend to retain power by catering to this group of "eternal dependents on federal largesse." It's the easiest way to "get votes," I gather....
But no viable, free, prosperous society can subsist on this basis.
Indeed, colorado tanker. That would be most inconvenient....
Though I wouldn't find it exactly surprising.
What I don't get is everybody saying what a marvelous orator Obama is. Jeepers, the dude evidently can't even think without a teleprompter (to keep his "story straight?").
He comes across to me like a wind-up doll, programmed to function according to certain "cadences" that are alleged to have hypnotic qualities.... E.g., note the regular pacing of "rising" and "falling" notes of his discourse, which "mark" the pattern of normal human respiration....
This guy knows exactly what he's doing, and he absolutely means to do it — by hook or by crook. He is completely indifferent to the idea of moral law; such considerations are "apostasy" to him.... Morality is just something that "gets in the way" of ambition. Truth or Lie, it doesn't matter.
"What matters is me, Obama, getting what I want.... And I don't care who or what has to bleed and die for it."
And God only knows what that is! Apart from the obvious, that is: the destruction of America as we know her. Still, I have the uncanny feeling that the destruction of America is not the ultimate goal, merely a necessary step on the way to it.
Brooks is not too smart.. but knows where his graft is buttered..
All three are partners in crime..
Indeed. Brooks has, shall we say, a very strong sense of "class identification." Or so it seems to me. The name of that class: Ivy League graduates, especially those with advanced degrees.
In short, he does not — cannot??? — think "outside of that box."
Which strikes me as a disqualification for anyone pretending to be a fair and objective journalist....
Thank you ever so much for your astute insights, dear brother hosepipe!
God willing, Obama will set their cause back by a hundred years if they don't "do" something about him first.
Yet probably in their arrogance, they do not fully recognize the danger here....
Thank you ever so much for writing, goldstategop!
Thank you so much for your insights, dearest sister in Christ!
I completely agree with you about Obama's lackluster speaking style. Public speaking is part of my profession and I've never been impressed with him. Plus, there's usually a snarky, sarcastic component to his speeches that is undignified and grating. The good Presidential speakers like Kennedy and Reagan produced lines familiar to most Americans, but I can't think of a single Obama line that is memorable - or even remembered.
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