Class Conflict, American Style

In the 2010 electoral campaigns, some tea-party candidates referred to the objects of their middle-class enmity as "the ruling class." The ruling class, as its critics understand it, consists of the overlapping circles of Washington, Wall Street, Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Big Labor who have the sense that their resources—financial and intellectual—entitle them to an outsize say in how America is governed.

....Mr. Callahan traces the rise of the liberal rich to the 1960s and the vital role played by Stewart Mott, a General Motors heir, in financing the 1968 anti-war campaign of Eugene McCarthy. But Michael Knox Beran, in "Pathology of the Elites," looks well beyond the 1960s, finding the liberal-rich quest for power rooted in an older set of beliefs. In a collection of elegantly written essays on Lionel Trilling, Isaiah Berlin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hannah Arendt and Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Beran argues that this "arrogant" class is in thrall to the sort of utopian impulses long associated with radical leftism.

This article is actually a review of three different books on the subject of the rise of class differences, liberal elitism and class struggle.

I was hoping for a substantive discussion of the points presented in this article, but I can see that just isn't going to happen. I was a little too late reading the article and even the author, Fred Siegel, seems to think that there should be some middle ideological ground between the liberal elitists and the TEA party activists.

The problem is that there is no middle ground because any concession to big government fascism leaves a foot in the door for continued expansion of governmental control.

Middle ground can only be reached through total roll back of big government and the rebuilding of a government for the people, by the people, not the government elites or apparatchiks, as they were known in the USSR.

Class Conflict, American Style

Things are much simpler.

America is truly a middle class country, but middle class does not mean mediocre, but that we have maximized for ourselves a balance of the combination of prosperity, liberty, work, recreation, rest, entertainment, faith, etc.

If someone imbalances their life too much in some direction, they could become wealthier or poorer, but they have to go out of their way to do so.

Optimally, we shouldn’t fret too much about how our fellow citizens choose to live, and this is important. Bill Gates truly doesn’t object to creating other billionaires, multi-millionaires, and ordinary millionaires.

But this is not common in the world.

For around 1500 years, Europe, for example, was ruled by monarchies and nobility. They were the elites, and everyone else were commoners. Even today, now that most of their nobles have been neutered, Europe is still afflicted with the elite-commoner mindset. Polytechnic educated, but borderline hereditary Eurocrats are little different in their attitude of superiority, and their contempt for the commoner.

This also spread to Mexico, central and South America, in an even cruder form, and afflicts them terribly. For example, Mexico is ruled by a dozen or so powerful and wealthy families, who do not believe in “sharing the wealth”.

Their equivalent to Bill Gates, Carlos Slim has probably never voluntarily created another billionaire, multi-millionaire, or even millionaire in his life, and would be upset to know if he did so inadvertently.

So what is American “class conflict?” Simply put, when some Americans with wealth, political power, and maybe an Ivy League education, look at Europe, they like what they see. They like the idea that not only are they “better” than their fellow citizen, but that they have an inherent “nobility” that others don’t have, just because of who they are.

So, in a manner of speaking, be they John Kerry or a Supreme Court justice or two, they become somewhat Europhile, seeing what they do in Europe as being superior to what we do here, well, because they are European.

Yet this should not just be seen as a bad habit, but an ugly, even downright un-American frame of mind. Hillary Clinton, for example, made a lifelong enemy of Tipper Gore, because Hillary had been to Wellesley College, and Tipper had “only” graduated from Boston College, and Hillary endlessly rubbed Tipper’s face in it, that Tipper was a “commoner”, whereas Hillary was an “elite”.

And that’s a big part of being a Europhile elitist. Such behavior appeals to those who have a neurotic inferiority complex, masked in arrogance and aggression.

A great irony, I suppose, because the vast majority of “commoner” Americans can see right through such pretenses, and laugh and scorn such self appointed elites.

Good review. I'm looking forward to seeing these books at the bookstore or library.

I was a little too late reading the article and even the author, Fred Siegel, seems to think that there should be some middle ideological ground between the liberal elitists and the TEA party activists.

Between government being maximally involved in everything and government being minimally involved in nothing, there's going to be a middle ground, at least in theory. All the recent financial scandals suggest that there is at least some need for federal oversight of financial markets. Bridge collapses and oil spills also suggest that some oversight of infrastructure and the environment are necessary -- if some level of government really is up to doing the job.

So in theory, yes, there is a middle ground. But our politics is adversarial, so the middle ground will develop out of the conflict between left and right. Siegel isn't optimistic about people harmoniously agreeing on some middle position:

On both sides of the aisle, as Mr. Callahan notes, "the most active donors hold the most ideologically extreme views." That is why, regardless of the outcome of any one election, the mutual contempt evinced by liberal grandees and tea-party activists is likely to be with us for years to come.

You may be able to laugh at the liberal elitist control freaks, but I live in WA state, where the control freaks have total domination. ...or, at least they did until the last two local elections, when we managed to push them back a bit.

Once the liberal elitists, dominated in our case by the local university, have a hold on government, they move into every area of your life and don’t let go, even when their arguments are proven wrong and their regulations unenforceable. They simply switch gears and come up with a different argument.

For example, the left in WA state, the UN agenda 21 is the road map for government. They have been trying to oust the rural farmers and residents from their land for the past 25 years (return the rural lands to their rightful owners, the Indians). To do this they have relied on the Federal Clean Water act and Tribal fishing rights, as well as Global Warming.

Now that the Supreme Court has stated that the Federal Clean Water Act cannot be used to on non-navigable waters, they switched to suing for paper work violations and are now working on a plan to use acid rain as the excuse for regulation. In addition, they have set up fee based Storm water districts, with a bureaucratic head that is appointed, not elected and classes to train citizens to report on violations by their neighbors.

“...he’s one of those elusive neocons.” ‘

I think he’s one of those even more elusive (and now thoroughly endangered) centrist Dems.

I’ve read Seigel often, and I was surprised at the tone of some of remarks in this piece. Let’s face it, Sharron Angle is a genius compared to Boxer and she’s also a nice lady and not a b*tch, so she certainly would be an improvement. In addition the level of corruption tolerated by the Dems and the Left is completely unacceptable and it permeates their party, their unions, their media, and that is not good for our country.

Nevertheless it seems he gives a good over-view of the books reviewed.

I think he is better on Urban Policy than National Politics, that would be my assessment.

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