http://www.dailywire.com/news/8334/what-are-elites-and-why-does-everyone-seem-despise-ben-shapiro?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=news&utm_campaign=twitterbenshapiroWhat Are ‘Elites’ And Why Does Everyone Seem To Despise Them?BY: BEN SHAPIRO
AUGUST 12, 2016
Today, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote a piece titled “How Global Elites Forsake Their Countrymen.” Her argument: that “elites” in countries all over the West are utterly disconnected from the people who bear the burden of their policies: “the top detaching itself from the bottom, feeling little loyalty to it or affiliation with it….From what I’ve seen of those in power throughout business and politics now, the people of your country are not your countrymen, they’re aliens whose bizarre emotions you must attempt occasionally to anticipate and manage.”
Noonan doesn’t just criticize “elitist” policy separation, such as Angela Merkel’s failure to understand why her own population doesn’t want mass Muslim migration from the Middle East. She criticizes lifestyle: “In Manhattan, my little island off the continent, I see the children of the global business elite marry each other and settle in London or New York or Mumbai…Affluence detaches, power adds distance to experience.”
Noonan concludes, “our elites have abandoned or are abandoning the idea that they belong to a country, that they have ties that bring responsibilities, that they should feel loyalty to their people or, at the very least, a grounded respect.”
Noonan isn’t alone in expressing these sentiments. Last week, I received a series of text messages from two friends stumping on behalf of Donald Trump. One wrote, “There is a high tide coming in of disenfranchised Americans who toil and pray and go fight in the military that has been s*** on and ignored.” The other replied, “The elites are in their ivory towers. When is the last time Any one of those eggheads who sign letters hating Trump ever held a real job?”
The combined net wealth of these two anti-elitists: more than $75 million. Both inherited their wealth.
This seems to be a growing phenomenon – economic and educational elites paying homage to the Working Man, the Blue Collar Guy, the Rust Belt Voter Trod Under Elite Stiletto Heels. This is a form of virtue signaling all its own: yes, we’re wealthy, yes, we’re well-educated, but we can apologize for all of that by paying homage to Trumpism, and acting as though we understand the commoners. It’s paternalism of the highest order masquerading as Man Of The People schtick.
It’s also intellectually incoherent. Before ripping into the “elites,” we should at least come up with a common definition. The current definition seems to be “people with whom I disagree.” Ardent members of the Trump Train Union just say “cuck,” and in a way, that’s more honest – it’s just a slur. “Elites” has become a slur in the hands of people like Laura Ingraham (multimillionaire and Dartmouth graduate who clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas), but it masquerades as more than that. It isn’t, at least as currently stated.
Here’s what “elites” should mean, in a political context: people who think they can control your life better than you do. End of story. It’s not “elitist” to say that as a consumer, I should have the ability to buy any product I want, to say that as an employer, I should have the right to hire anybody I want; free trade isn’t “elitist.” Bernie Sanders, in this definition, is an elite. Donald Trump’s trade policy – a policy by which he sits on a mountaintop and deigns to determine which jobs are most important, and who should pay more for which product – is actually elitist.
But that’s not how people use “elitist.” Now it just means “blue collar people like this one thing, but you don’t, so you’re an elitist.” This sort of class warfare used to be foreign to conservatives. Aside from perhaps Harry Truman, America has never had a president who was not a member of the economic or intellectual elite. That doesn’t make every president an elitist. Woodrow Wilson was an elitist, and he was far poorer than George Washington, who was an extraordinarily wealthy man.
Let’s cut out the class warfare and stick to ideas. Or, at the very least, let’s ask what people mean when they say “elites,” other than just using the term as a rhetorical club to beat opponents.
