The Elites Versus the Rest of Us

A lot of people are wondering these days about what is happening in this country. Unfortunately, there are many good reasons for this consternation. For example; the economy is clearly moving in the wrong direction, but many of our political leaders seem to think that things are just fine. It has often been said that there is something in the water around Washington D.C. that causes our politicians to lose touch with the perspective of the common man.

It appears that most of our political leaders belong to the cultural or intellectual elites. So who are these elites? The renowned professor of sociology of religion at Boston University, Peter Berger, explained that in every country there is a group of cultural elites who constitute no more than 10% of the population of a country. It should be noted however, that this small group has power and influence far larger than their numbers.

In general, these people believe that modernity should result with a decline and disappearance of religious faith and values. When I asked Professor Berger why these people are so liberal he replied that he “could not prove it, but his theory was that most of these people were educated in the humanities or social sciences.” He thought that these areas of study convince people that everything is relative. These cultural elites become our academics, lawyers, judges, journalists, and politicians. This also leads to atheism, agnosticism, or a general disdain for those guided by faith.

Thomas Sowell explains the nature of the intellectual elites in his book Intellectuals and Society.
We must be clear about what we mean by intellectuals. Here “intellectuals” refers to an occupational category, people who occupations deal primarily with ideas-writers, academics and the like. Most of us do not think of brain surgeons or engineers as intellectuals, despite the demanding mental training that each goes through, and virtually no one regards even the most brilliant financial wizard as an intellectual.[1]

The intellectuals’ exaltation of “reason” often comes at the expense of experience, allowing them to have sweeping confidence about things in which they have little or no experience.[2] Sowell explains that intellectuals have ideas about economics, warfare, morality, the environment and many other disciplines that they have little real knowledge or experience in. Or as Ronald Reagan noted about liberals “they know a lot that isn’t so.”

When we combine the ideas from Berger and Sowell it is clear that these elites view the rest of us as “bitter clingers, who hold on to their guns or religion.” These elites don’t believe in God and have replaced Him with the state. Slavisa Tasic explains why the elites tend to favor government intervention when he writes: “Intellectuals naturally esteem the value of intellectual work, but free markets do not reward intellectual work as much as they reward improved allocation of resources on the market by virtue of entrepreneurship, innovation, and risk taking.”[3] While there are exceptions, most successful business men were not “A” students. Instead, “A” students teach “B” students, who work for “C” students.

According to Robert Nozick, intellectuals like socialism because it reminds them of school, where they are held in the highest esteem. In contrast with the real, market driven world, where intellectuals believe that things are mad, chaotic, and unrewarding of their abilities.[4]

Perhaps the worst group of these elites constitute what Angelo Codevilla refers to as “the ruling class.” This ruling class has more in common with each other than the American people in general. He writes "Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters—speaking the “in language—serves as a badge of identity."[5]

The ruling class consists of both democrats and republicans, who want to “reform the American people’s family and spiritual lives.” The ruling class views religion and especially Christianity as the greatest barrier to human progress. According to Codevilla “While the unenlightened ones believe that man is created in the image and likeness of God and that we are subject to Him and to His nature’s laws, the enlightened ones know that we are the products of evolution, driven by chance, the environment, and the will to primacy.”[6] These enlightened rulers believe it is up to them to move the rest of us “unenlightened children” in the right direction.

Professor Berger has argued that the most religious country in the world is India, while the least religious is Sweden. Consequently, America is a nation of Indians governed by Swedes. Psalms tells us that “the fool says in his heart that there is no God.” The time has come to vote these "fools" out of office and put in their place, conservative people of faith who are committed to God and His righteousness. We need to pray that God frustrates the efforts of all the elites and especially those in the ruling class.

Jeremiah 17:5 warns “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord.” Finally, we need to put our trust in God, not in politicians who promise us a free lunch. Such largess only increases our already unsustainable national debt. If America has any hope for a future, we must get right with God and put our trust in Him.

[1]Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 2-3.
[2] Ibid., 29.
[3] Slavisa Tasic, “The Modern Growth of Government,” The Independent Review vol 14, no. 4 (Spring 2010), 561.
[4] Robert Nozick, “Why do Intellectuals oppose Capitalism?” in Socratic Puzzles (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 280-95.
[5] Angelo Codevilla, “America’s Ruling Class—And the Perils of Revolution” in The American Spectator, (July- August 2010), 2.
[6] Ibid., 13.

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Posted by: Daniel Ioan Notar *DJ_DANY*