[dirtboy]

Why Our Elites Stink

Pretty funny headline coming from a so-called conservative who spends his days with his lips affixed to the elite's arses.

[Macoozie]

Meritocracy?
Today it’s anything BUT merit. It is gender, race connection and every other corruption one can imagine.
Mr Brooks is a case n point.
He ain’t no conservative, but is always highlighted as such by the rags. He should have been passed over years agao.

[gunnyg]

bottom line.............

“There ain’t no ticks like poly-ticks. Bloodsuckers all.”
-Davy Crockett (unsourced)
Ref
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett

[LoveUSA]

Everybody thinks they are countercultural rebels, insurgents against the true establishment, which is always somewhere else. This attitude prevails in the Ivy League, in the corporate boardrooms and even at television studios where hosts from Harvard, Stanford and Brown rail against the establishment.

Interesting bit of self-psychoanalysis performed by Mr. Brooks. (who, btw, writes like a college student)

[andy58-in-nh]

"Over the past half–century, a more diverse and meritocratic elite has replaced the Protestant Establishment. People are more likely to rise on the basis of grades, test scores, effort and performance."

Horse flop. In business - yes - people are in fact much more likely to succeed due to effort and performance. But our Elites largely do not come from the ranks of businessmen and women - they come from interconnected families whose members have worked in government for several generations, who all attend the same handful of universities (where last names and endowments matter more than grades), and who obtain employment based upon the access such connections afford.

[oncebitten]

I think a lot of the failure of our “elites” is the lack of classical education and a focus on the soft subjects like law, political science (sic), psychology and others. The lack of classical education means they have little appreciation for western culture and no perspective on history. The lack of science and math (hard subjects) means they have mushy thinking and can't tell hard facts from half-truths.

[P.O.E.]

[ClearCase_guy]

Short summation:

Character counts

We’ve been saying this for many years, and the media elite (including Brooks) have been telling us we’re crazy — “Clinton is brilliant! Obama is awesome!”

Virtue matters, and the Left has none.

[Rummyfan]

Over the past half–century, a more diverse and meritocratic elite has replaced the Protestant Establishment. People are more likely to rise on the basis of grades, test scores, effort and performance.

Ignoring that this explanation of the state of our elites comes from one of the said elite, I have to ask: is Brooks this dumb or just naive? Or both?

[Poison Pill]

Over the past half–century, a more diverse and meritocratic elite has replaced the Protestant Establishment.

To test this theory, call Jesse Jackson Jr.'s office and ask when he will be returning to work.

[DManA]

The difference in the 19th century the “elite” mostly left the 99% alone to live their lives as they saw fit.

Today they want to control how much pop we drink.

The problem isn’t that there is a small elite or how people get into that group. The problem is the elite is try to enslave us all. This is new since 50 years ago.

[Kenton]

People are more likely to rise on the basis of grades, test scores, effort and performance of their non-WhiteMaleness.

Fixed it...

[danielmryan]

I'm going to break with the general panning. Brooks has put his fingers on something - and, believe it or not, it is conservative in a way.

His thesis is that the elites of our day don't recognize themselves as such. He's not denying that the ruling class exists. What he's saying is that they don't recognize themselves as such. Rather than being disingenous, they sincerely deny that they're anything of the sort.

He's credible on this point because he hobnobs with them, so he knows what they're really like. Sure, his worldview can be charitably described as restricted. But, this subject is one of those areas he knows about because he sees them on a day-to-day basis. An analogy: a CEO may be a mercantilist jerkwad in politics, but the same person is going to be knowledgable about management issues.

His point is that the "non-elite" elites duck out of the responsibilities that elites have traditionally assumed. Although sincere in their protestations, today's ruling class have the advantage of denying responsibility for their blunders because they think the other guy is the "real" elite (and therefore should be held accountable.)

Had the ruling class been a real elite, they would have cultivated a sense of honor and sacrifice that would make them more accountable for their actions. It's a Tory argument at heart: if society must have elites, better that they cultivate a sense of social responsibility which would keep them from screwing things up and blowing off responsibility for it.

However...I'm begging the question, as does Brooks himself by conflating dislike of the ruling class with Jacobinical leftistm. Would American society be better without a ruling class? If "yes," then what he wrote is little more than an unconvincing think-piece.

[LibLieSlayer]

A life member of the gop/e tries to paint himself as one of us... NO SALE!

LLS

[GOPJ]

The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service.

Today’s elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership code. The language of meritocracy (how to succeed) has eclipsed the language of morality (how to be virtuous).

David Brooks is close to understanding. Doesn't it seem strange countries run by 'kings and queens' (even though many are personally borderline incompetent) - tend to create more stable societies?

[justiceseeker93]

Over the past half–century, a more diverse and meritocratic elite has replaced the Protestant Establishment. People are more likely to rise on the basis of grades, test scores, effort and performance.

Brooks may be right, except for those benefited by Affirmative Action!!!

[RichInOC]

I’d say today’s meritocratic elites achieve and preserve their status not mainly by being corrupt but mainly by being ambitious and disciplined.

Dave, I can think of some situations in which that could be considered a distinction without a difference.

[Billthedrill]

There is, as others have pointed out, a rich irony in the virtues of elitism being opined in the pages of the NY Times and by the pens of David Brooks and Christopher Hayes. The latter alleges that today's elites are somehow more "meritocratic" and, by extension of the usual liberal narrative, less white and male, and by further extension (conservatives can recite this stuff in their sleep by now) stronger through diversity.

I have some bad news for Mr. Hayes - elites are no more corrupt now than they ever were, nor are they any more able. They tend to be more publicly undisciplined, yes, I'll give him that. But there was no Golden Age when those cut out of the old criteria of white and male and Protestant suddenly blossomed forth in a burst of meritocratic virtue. The elite decided to change the color of its cloak, that is all.

Neither man has followed this course of argument to a conclusion that must be exquisitely uncomfortable to the standard liberal narrative - if today's more diverse elite is more corrupt, then what is it about being white, male, and Protestant that leads to the discipline and sense of noblesse oblige that supposedly typified the old elite? We'd best not go there, at least not in the pages of the NY Times. We are told that today's elite are less self-policing, for example, but I'm not so sure. It is simply that the policing has different criteria these days. It is just as ruthless as ever it was. Look, for example, at what happens in the elite press when a Bernard Goldberg pronounces that emperor naked. Look, for example, at what happens in elite academia when Larry Summers suggests that women aren't as prominent in mathematics because, well, because not as many of them like it. Look what happens when an elite entertainer wanders from the liberal narrative, where examples are too many to enumerate.

What is being policed by the elites these days is not a code of conduct, it is adherence to a specific social narrative, and I suggest to Hayes and Brooks that it was always that way; that the only thing that has changed is the narrative, and that if today's elite stinks, the cause is likely to be found there, and not any pompous, head-scratching puzzlement over why "meritocratic" has not produced merit.