Hanson is absolutely right that liberals and the left should expose themselves to the perils of entrepreneurship. But their own blindness to the economic and social values that undergird American prosperity and stability is no excuse for conservative indifference to the values of achievement, learning, and eloquence that we should expect from our leaders.
This blog's purpose is to document the decline of America's contribution as the last stand of Western Civilization. In centuries future (if a civilized people emerge from the ashes), people will wonder what happened. The above is what happened.
It didn't happen over night. It took decades for the educational establishment to be taken over by socialists, fascists, and communists to indoctrinate the youth into believing a completely contrary definition of the word and principles of liberal. But it wasn't just the word that was redefined. It was the protection of the baton of Western Civilization:
- The moral duties and responsibilities of individuals and the importance of character, dignity and personal honor.
- The lessons of over 10,000 years of history.
- The difference between the role of society and the role of government.
- The importance of education to improve one's ability to use reason and to immediately recognize propaganda and failed ideas.
It is the last bullet that Dr. Mac Donald addressed most specifically in her post.
We hear a great deal about elitism, having to do with our elected representatives' desires to lord over us, to use their power to treat us all like children, ignoring the fact that they exist to serve us, not to control us. This definition of elitism (from Dictionary.com) is the first definition:
1. practice of or belief in rule by an elite.
There is nothing inherently wrong with being ruled by an elite. It depends on how you define and what you include as "an elite."
Lumped into the elitist bath are the few remaining intellectuals who were educated in such a way as to provide society with wise advice and counsel. This is more akin to the second definition of elitism:
2. consciousness of or pride in belonging to a select or favored group.
The second definition involves belonging to a select group, but in America it isn't selection by birth; rather, it is selection based on merit, most commonly one of education, where there is a requirement to study and achieve in order to be invited into the club. It is a merit based club, not a birthright based club.
"The reward of esteem, respect and gratitude [is] due to those who devote their time and efforts to render the youths of every successive age fit governors for the next."- Thomas Jefferson, 1810
All Americans are not required to do the heavy lifting with regard to understanding all of history's lessons (nor are all Americans capable of doing so), but because there has always existed a small, select group of intellectuals (synonymous with "Men of Letters") who would warn us if we were walking too closely to the edge of the slippery slope, we were protected. Our culture used to recognize and respect them for the benefits they provided to all of us. But all intellectuals, even those of the right kind, are being tarnished by those of the wrong kind, and are being relegated to the American equivalent of Siberia: irrelevance.
"The most effectual means of preventing [the perversion of power into tyranny are] to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes."- Thomas Jefferson, 1779
Far too many on the right side of politics have decided to paint all intellectuals with the broad brush of manipulators and indoctrinators, and impugning not just the purpose and character of all, but their importance. Education has always been the key to conservative success and the foundation of America's success.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."- Thomas Jefferson, 1816
Educationally-based (i.e., learned) elitism has gotten a bad wrap. There is a good kind and bad kind. But there exists today an idea that one can be educated too much. We know that one can be indoctrinated instead of educated, but if we destroy the latter to reform the former, we will have accomplished what the Left has been desiring to do for decades: keep our people ignorant, and therefore unprotected, without the ability to recognize the signs of tyranny and what to do to address it.
It's wrong to suggest that a people who have learned only memes and bumper sticker slogans of liberty can defend it. An ignorant populist revolt ends up with a French style revolution where they decapitate everyone who they take a dislike to. If people are incapable of understanding all that liberty requires, the respect of order and law primarily, then they must have the ability to take advice and learn from others, in the old fashioned sense of respecting one's elders or betters. But, we have a movement in this country, a large movement, who believes that all educated people are power hungry and disrespectful of the common, ordinary man.
This type of movement has appeared many times and rather than educating their youth, they eat them. Without a firm commitment to understanding what has come before, we are doomed to repeat history's mistakes.
One of the mistakes that is woven throughout history is the concept of populism, but it is not the populism that appeals to the common man's moral nature or recognizes the rights of every person. When populism is perverted it appeals to man's selfish nature, where one man is pitted against another in a kind of class warfare. Rather than relying on principles or ideas that have been tested, populism offers what feels good rather than what is good, and what temporarily satisfies rather that what works long term. Populism placates. It delivers what people want to hear rather than the truth.
In many cases, populism relies on a scapegoat. With Germany it was the Jews and intellectuals. In Bolshevik Russia it was the aristocracy pitted against the poor or working class. In the Middle East (and elsewhere throughout the world today) it is the ignorant, radical Muslim pitted against moderates (or Western societies).
In nearly all of these scenarios, the "oppressed" are told how noble, special, important or brilliant they are and how they are "due" what others have, simply by existing. The "oppressed" are told they are entitled to the tangible and intangible property of others by birthright (not by hard work or fortitude). It is a kind of populist style of monarchy, i.e., the Divine Right of Everyone In Their Group, regardless of effort or achievement.
In American populism, the enemy of the oppressed common man is the educated, often demonstrated by how well one speaks; therefore, how well one doesn't speak is seen as a badge of honor.
Eloquence is only one demonstrative of a disciplined and educated mind, but the lack of it is often a clear indicator that both are missing. Some people, far too many, don't care about that, to the extreme of loathing it. It is a learned skill and the skill itself should have some recognized value, but it isn't everything.
Eloquence is something we should care about, but what is more important is erudition, for it will be our undoing if we devalue its importance.
Now many people confuse eloquence and erudition, and while sometimes these skills exist in the same person, they don't always. No one, for example, would doubt the erudition of Stephen Hawking, but his eloquence is demonstrated in his writing. Hawking's handicap prevents him from delivering a passionate speech. Similarly, George Bush was incapable of pronouncing the word nuclear, and was wanting with regard to his public speaking, but he was an educated man.
Thomas Jefferson, a man whose erudition is beyond dispute (and was also an eloquent writer), was a terrible speech maker. He had a high-pitched voice and was thought to have a small speech impediment. In Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan we had both erudition and eloquence.
Far too many have come to associate eloquence with the bad kind of elitism, acquiring the horrid trait of Britons in believing that anyone who speaks properly, and wasn't born into it, is putting on airs.
Americans have swallowed the populist appeals of nefarious politicians and are being bribed, as Romans were with bread and circuses, as Germans were with appeals of vanity, and Islamic fundamentalists are with 70 virgins or the promise of an Islamic Caliphate.
Americans who have come to believe that education isn't important, and that politicians who speak in simplistic tones to demonstrate that they are "one of us" are being duped, and will soon discover that they have chosen badly. Principles matter and one of the enduring principles is that an educated and disciplined mind is more valuable than a snake oil salesman's ability to con a crowd into buying their nonsense.
The trick is in recognizing the difference between eloquence and a con artist, but it requires education to recognize the difference, and if that is missing, it requires respect and trust of an educated elite.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.- H. L. Mencken
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