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America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution
American Spectator ^ | Angelo M. Codevilla

Posted on 07/16/2010 4:35:54 AM PDT by rellimpank

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets' nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.

When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term "political class" came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public's understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the "ruling class."

(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 10thamendment; class; codevilla; cwii; cwiiping; revwarii; rinos; ruling; rulingclass; washington
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To: NFHale

‘Mike Rowe does “Dirty Jobs”...’

At one time I’d have seen his ads for Ford in that category, but not at this time.

“...I do “Dissing Libtards”.”

So sez N Effing Hale? :)


81 posted on 07/16/2010 12:21:47 PM PDT by Avoiding_Sulla (Yesterday's Left = today's status quo. Thus CONSERVATIVE is a conflicted label for battling tyranny.)
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To: Avoiding_Sulla

“..So sez N Effing Hale? :)...”

Right on the money, my good Patriot brother Sulla...Right on the “Effing” money!! Haha!


82 posted on 07/16/2010 12:27:25 PM PDT by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.)
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To: Avoiding_Sulla

...and Ford stood tall and didn’t take the bailout.

I’ll buy their products instead of the other two or foreign.


83 posted on 07/16/2010 12:29:53 PM PDT by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.)
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To: Buckeye McFrog
a third-party that ran on a promise of a Term Limits constitutional amendment AND ending all government pensions would get some serious traction

The problem is, similar to Greece, nearly half our population is now on the King's payroll.

84 posted on 07/16/2010 12:38:07 PM PDT by dragnet2
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To: NFHale
Cause SERIOUS PAIN to his life to MAKE him remove it, and to the lives of all those they send to put the boot back in place, until they STOP sending them.

Those are the options the Patriots, our ancestors, faced.

I presume that you are fully prepared to survive, belong to an organized and trained group with ZERO moles, and have secure communications?

There's a certain Somebody who cooked up the organizing principles 3,000 years ago.

85 posted on 07/16/2010 12:43:28 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (Grovelnator Schwarzenkaiser, fashionable fascism one charade at a time.)
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To: Sawdring
Have you ever killed anyone? Don't you think it would weigh heavily on your conscience?


86 posted on 07/16/2010 12:45:25 PM PDT by PA Engineer (Liberate America from the occupation media.)
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To: rellimpank

It’s Tea Party time for cleaning out the RINOs. Without these RINOs votes, the rats wouldn’t be passing 1000 - 2000 plus page bills that nobody reads.


87 posted on 07/16/2010 12:46:47 PM PDT by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: Avoiding_Sulla
Bush's clearly stated goal was to promote home ownership so people have a stake in their communities. He was clear. The rats then screwed with the loan processing rules.

There was no hidden agenda. Bush trusted people would act in good faith FAR TOO MUCH. Which pissed me off.

The rest is a history lesson learned the hard way. I hope that's in Bush's upcoming book.

88 posted on 07/16/2010 1:32:04 PM PDT by BobS
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To: neverdem
Quite a few RINOs lost in the last 2 elections because of fake conservative rats. Now those have been exposed for what they really are.

It seems to me a lot of them don't want Obama near them until the next election.

89 posted on 07/16/2010 2:01:55 PM PDT by BobS
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bump for later reading


90 posted on 07/16/2010 2:04:07 PM PDT by ELS (Vivat Benedictus XVI!)
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To: BobS

“Bush’s clearly stated goal was to promote home ownership so people have a stake in their communities. He was clear.”

Talk is cheap. The implementation expensive.

“The rats then screwed with the loan processing rules.”

Yes Bush’s regulator was treated very badly in Barny Frank’s committee.
Bad enough as that was, then Bush said NOTHING, which is abrogation of his responsibility to see that the law is obeyed.
You’d expect of Frank what he did — but did you expect that of Bush?

“Bush trusted people would act in good faith FAR TOO MUCH. Which pissed me off.”

Good faith is not enough. Neither Bush, Daddy or W, learned from Reagan — “trust but verify.” That was supposed to have been W’s promise — that he’d be more like RR than Bush41. Remember? Yet this is only one of several areas where he failed. I’m glad you’re pissed off too. Keep that reminder. I have.

“There was no hidden agenda.”

You do not KNOW that.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you TRUST that it is so. What were you saying about trusting FAR TOO MUCH?
The verification for what you are denying is still wanting. There’s a great deal to fear from globalist influence. Money can be used to buy allegiance,
or to spy and then twist arms,
or buy thugs who break arms and more.
Statism is today’s true threat.


91 posted on 07/16/2010 2:18:53 PM PDT by Avoiding_Sulla (Yesterday's Left = today's status quo. Thus CONSERVATIVE is a conflicted label for battling tyranny.)
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To: Avoiding_Sulla

Somebody explain to me why the ONLY thing W really fought for was amnesty with chain migration. THAT I want to hear.


92 posted on 07/16/2010 2:35:04 PM PDT by stephenjohnbanker (Support our Troops, and vote out the RINOS!)
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To: rellimpank
Good article, but way, way, way, way too long.

What caught my eye:

Much less does membership in the ruling class depend on high academic achievement. To see something closer to an academic meritocracy consider France, where elected officials have little power, a vast bureaucracy explicitly controls details from how babies are raised to how to make cheese, and people get into and advance in that bureaucracy strictly by competitive exams. Hence for good or ill, France's ruling class are bright people -- certifiably. Not ours. But didn't ours go to Harvard and Princeton and Stanford? Didn't most of them get good grades? Yes. But while getting into the Ecole Nationale d'Administration or the Ecole Polytechnique or the dozens of other entry points to France's ruling class requires outperforming others in blindly graded exams, and graduating from such places requires passing exams that many fail, getting into America's "top schools" is less a matter of passing exams than of showing up with acceptable grades and an attractive social profile. American secondary schools are generous with their As. Since the 1970s, it has been virtually impossible to flunk out of American colleges. And it is an open secret that "the best" colleges require the least work and give out the highest grade point averages. No, our ruling class recruits and renews itself not through meritocracy but rather by taking into itself people whose most prominent feature is their commitment to fit in. The most successful neither write books and papers that stand up to criticism nor release their academic records. Thus does our ruling class stunt itself through negative selection. But the more it has dumbed itself down, the more it has defined itself by the presumption of intellectual superiority.

....

The grandparents of today's Americans (132 million in 1940) had opportunities to serve on 117,000 school boards. To exercise responsibilities comparable to their grandparents', today's 310 million Americans would have radically to decentralize the mere 15,000 districts into which public school children are now concentrated. They would have to take responsibility for curriculum and administration away from credentialed experts, and they would have to explain why they know better. This would involve a level of political articulation of the body politic far beyond voting in elections every two years.

93 posted on 07/16/2010 2:40:39 PM PDT by x
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RE :” How about Bush pushing home loans for totally unqualified minorities several years before the housing market imploded.... Here’s his “Home loans for unqualified minorities” speech.”

” How about Bush pushing home loans for totally unqualified minorities several years before the housing market imploded....

_________________

American Dream Downpayment Initiative - Affordable Housing - In FY2007, Congress appropriated $24,750,000 for ADDI. Previously, Congress appropriated $74,513,000 in FY2003 and $86,984 in FY2004, $49,600,000 in FY2005 and $24,750,000 in FY2006 http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/affordablehousing/programs/home/addi/ Seems ADDI turned out to be chicken feed in relation to the current crisis.

94 posted on 07/16/2010 3:28:02 PM PDT by anglian
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Obama Sued Citibank Under CRA to Force it to Make Bad Loans – Posted on September 30, 2008 http://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/obama-sued-citibank-under-cra-to-force-it-to-make-bad-loans/


95 posted on 07/16/2010 3:36:53 PM PDT by anglian
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To: PA Engineer

He wasn’t talking about combat, but about standing there pulling a lever on a guillotine.


96 posted on 07/16/2010 6:29:36 PM PDT by Sawdring
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To: rellimpank

Some vague parallels emerging wrt the French Revolution. (Nobles and clergy exempt from taxation (read: their own rules for everyone else), for instance)


97 posted on 07/16/2010 7:04:20 PM PDT by Tench_Coxe
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To: ExGeeEye; mo

I stand corrected. Add their release/pardon to the list of campaign promises I expect next election cycle.


98 posted on 07/16/2010 8:15:01 PM PDT by P.O.E. ("Now who's being naive, Kaye?" - M. Corleone)
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To: US_MilitaryRules

http://www.disgrafservices.com/newEquipment/section/wohl_pro_tec_115.htm


99 posted on 07/17/2010 6:06:52 AM PDT by RipSawyer (Trying to reason with a leftist is like trying to catch sunshine in a fish net at midnight.)
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To: Avoiding_Sulla

“These a$$holes take turns mounting a phony opposition. Bob Dole, Al Gore, John Kerry, McLame is simply the most obvious Prez candidate ever.”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

I won’t argue against the theory, it certainly seems the case but do you really believe Gore was a phony opponent? I think they really believed Gore would win, at least with their fraud operation. He did get the majority of the popular vote and if people in his own state of Tennessee hadn’t refused to vote for him he would have been president.

Actually it seems to me that the Republicans have a hard time finding a way to lose sometimes. GHW Bush acted as though he couldn’t wait to retire and was just going through the motions against Clinton, Dole, who can be found on video making some masterful speeches performed like a wooden dummy and still Clinton only won a plurality of the popular vote, they had to have Ross Perot in the mix to get Clinton elected twice. I sometimes think W was elected by accident, as I said if Gore had carried his own home state he would have been president. How many candidates can’t carry their own state?


100 posted on 07/17/2010 6:23:04 AM PDT by RipSawyer (Trying to reason with a leftist is like trying to catch sunshine in a fish net at midnight.)
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