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To: Brices Crossroads

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/254939/elite-guilt-begat-obamacare-interview?page=5

LOPEZ: Who is the ultimate anti-elite?

BERAN: The founders of the Republic. They were, certainly, an elite; but they were an elite gifted with self-knowledge, and they created a constitutional system designed to frustrate the human will to power. Their system of checks and balances has preserved Americans’ liberties and at the same time allowed men like Lincoln to rise into greatness — men who lacked elite credentials and would not have gotten very far under the elitist regimes of the Old World. The question today is whether we can prevent the wreck of the founders’ labors and restrain the Leviathan of the administrative state.

As a result of the mandarin revolution over which our elites have presided, too much discretionary authority has been confided to unelected regulators and unaccountable quasi-public bodies (like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), and too much purse-string power has been vested in robo-laws that automatically trigger expenditures of public funds and steadily increase the size and scope of the government. It is sobering to reflect that overall government spending in the United States, which accounted for less than 7 percent of the gross domestic product in 1903, was estimated in 2009 to account for as much as 43 percent of GDP.

LOPEZ: Is Sarah Palin’s popularity a response to the “pathology of the elites”?

BERAN: Richard Cohen said in theWashington Post the other day that the Left “has long thought that there ought to be some connection between intelligence or learning and the right to govern.” How nice it must be to belong to that good-thinking mutual-admiration society that so forthrightly opposes its opponents’ faith in government by the stupid! For Cohen, the connection between intelligence and the right to govern is sufficiently attested in President Obama’s case by the fact that he and his wife have been “accredited by no less than four Ivy League institutions — Harvard twice and Princeton and Columbia, once each.” Res ipsa loquitur, as we elitists might say.

Sarah Palin infuriates the elites because she has not only questioned their system of accreditation, she has identified their moral “spinelessness” precisely with the elite training they have received, and has in particular questioned the moral value of an “elite Ivy League education.” Palin is saying essentially what Trilling said 60 years ago when he argued that the “educated class” of his day, however accomplished it might have been, was morally unintelligent. Your garden-variety elitist will put up with this sort of criticism from Lionel Trilling, but not from Sarah Palin. They despise the folksy candor that has made her a popular figure in much of the rest of the country.

(much more at link.....great interview of the author of “The Pathology of Elites”)


2 posted on 12/18/2010 9:27:46 AM PST by roses of sharon (I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13)
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To: roses of sharon
For Cohen, the connection between intelligence and the right to govern is sufficiently attested in President Obama’s case by the fact that he and his wife have been “accredited by no less than four Ivy League institutions — Harvard twice and Princeton and Columbia, once each.” Res ipsa loquitur, as we elitists might say."

post hoc, ergo propter hoc I would say in response:

“After, therefore because of.” A common fallacy in reasoning, in which causality is ascribed to preceding conditions which were in fact irrelevent to the supposed effect."

10 posted on 12/18/2010 9:46:17 AM PST by jessduntno (Care what the Left thinks of you? "Their opinion of me and my policies is irrelevant." - Dick Cheney)
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To: roses of sharon
For Cohen, the connection between intelligence and the right to govern is sufficiently attested in President Obama’s case by the fact that he and his wife have been “accredited by no less than four Ivy League institutions — Harvard twice and Princeton and Columbia, once each.” Res ipsa loquitur, as we elitists might say.

Cohen's Kool-Ade fueled fascination with the Kenyan Entity's purported accreditations from two schools, best described as Marxist petri dishes, is typical of the MSM Obama cultists. In fact, the Kenyan Entity has never shown a shred of a paper trail demonstrating his matriculation, attendance, major fields of study, grade transcripts, articles, papers, or theses, let alone his successful completion of the credit hours necessary for the award of a bachelors degree, [Columbia] or a JD [Harvard]. Are the Palin-haters concerned that they are supporting a changeling,. a fraudulent usurper who has NO qualifications of any sort, whose background gets curiouser every day? If their mania over Palin is any indication, it would seem they now view the Kenyan Entity as an impending disaster. Hence the crazy puff pieces on his electability.

31 posted on 12/18/2010 10:58:01 AM PST by Bedford Forrest (Roger, Contact, Judy, Out. Fox One. Splash one.<I>)
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