In an interview at In These Times (hat tip: RealClearPolitics), Thomas Frank of What’s the Matter With Kansas? fame points out something that’s worth reflecting on:
What’s the content of the ideology of the professional class and how does it hurt working people? What are their guiding principles?
The first commandment of the professional class is the idea of meritocracy, which allows people to think that those on top are there because they deserve to be. With the professional class, it’s always associated with education. They deserve to be there because they worked really hard and went to a good college and to a good graduate school. They’re high achievers. Democrats are really given to credentialism in a way that Republicans aren’t.
[…]
That was an essential point that I try to make in Listen Liberal: that there is no solidarity in a meritocracy. A meritocracy really is every man for himself.
That’s a very interesting point. His claim is that the Democratic Party’s technocratic wing is in essential agreement with the Rand Paul-style objectivists. I’m not sure how you can justify other components of the Democratic platform other than on cynical, political grounds using that as a basis.
But it really does explain what’s going on here in Chicago.
Frank is an idiot. Educated people stand out as villains because Americans are terrified of education. The meritocracy is far greater than professional Democrats. Look at every allegedly humble big state school, with its frats and sororities, and how useful these are for nepotists. Right now, there’s a guy who hires only SAEs in Dallas who is really upset about the liberal elitists on the coasts.
“Americans are terrified of education” Absolute and utter nonsense, and a completely unsupported assertion. Rather, it is Modulo who is “afraid”, and afraid of other Americans, no doubt because they do not share his high opinion of himself–the sophomoric moniker is the real tip off here.
The fact remains that “higher education” today is more about keeping gates to the Liberal Nomenklatura rather than actually teaching anything that is much of use, particularity outside of STEM. One can readily see this when ignoramuses such as Kerry, Hillary, Obama or Michelle Obama sport Ivy League degrees.
Meritocracy my foot. It is a complete and total illusions. The country would be better served by closing down these so called “elite schools”, and taking their endowments to pay off the ridiculous damages this imbeciles have inflicted on the USA these last 70 years.
Seriously, one could not give mpst of these Liberals the sole hot doc concession in Times Square, free hot dogs and $50k in cash, and expect them to turn a profit inside a year. They are wholly dependent on the illusion that they are “Experts”. They are only expert solely in bilking the taxpayer; they should be shown the door.
You sound exactly like the worst professional from an Ivy sneering at everything outside of their comfort zone. Americans do hate education, which is partly why our country is so mediocre. You can pick up the same social imperatives from the New Yorker about what readers of the New Yorker do and don’t need to know as you can from any screed about how liberals couldn’t budget a lemonade stand.
“I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”
If there’s an educated class that has damaged this country it’s all those platoons of MBA’s being pumped out of B schools, and they are not, as a rule, liberals.
Who crashed the economy? MBA’s. Who launched the Iraq war? A Harvard MBA, that’s who.
I always wondered why “Principles of Bombing Syria and Iraq” was a pre-requisite to “Industrial Marketing I.”
Probably missed it when you opted for “Screwing Everyone Else 101” to complete your core curriculum.
Steve