Liberal politics is now – over there as much as here – a form of social snobbery. To express concern about mass immigration, or reservations about the Obama healthcare plan, is unacceptable in bien-pensant circles because this is simply not the way educated people are supposed to think. It follows that those who do think (and talk) this way are small-minded bigots, rednecks, oiks, or whatever your local code word is for "not the right sort".
Yeah, that growing snobbery seems right. Lord knows, I don't understand the appeal of NASCAR. But I don't sneer at those who do like it. It is no more incomprehensible to me than the thought that some people love opera, soccer, or PBS.
The Left wants to rule for the benefit of the general public--as long as they accept what the elites tell them they need and want--but they don't really care for them. Or respect them.
Perhaps this is an outgrowth of the Left's disdain for our soldiers who are largely drawn from this recruiting pool, who are viewed by our Left as too stupid to know what is good for them, and who are too stupid to either know they shouldn't enlist or have any alternatives to military service.
I don't get it. Yes, I live in Ann Arbor and I have some letters after my name from many years in college. But I was born and raised in Detroit (and even worked for what can only be described as a "slum lord," briefly). I was the first in my family to go to college.
And I am grateful that my parents always pointed me toward college. But while I value a college education, I never absorbed the attitude that anything less than that makes you less of a person. Yes, as my father once quipped, I went off to college and "married the professor's daughter," but it did not take away my respect for honest work away. These people who are "not the right sort" are my people (and do click through to read Orson Scott Card's piece that I quote and link there). God help us if we have too few of them and too many trust fund lefties.
One of my worries is that my children, who live in a good city with parents who have education, will start with advantages that so many others won't have without realizing they have a head start. I worry they will develop the view that there are people who are "not the right sort." I may live in Ann Arbor, but literally and figuratively, I'm not that far from Detroit though they are cities worlds apart.
My children were born in and are growing up in Ann Arbor. They will go to college. Period. I want them to have opportunities greater than the ones I have been blessed with.
But they don't have one foot firmly planted in the class that works with its hands. I hope that I can instill in them a deeply held respect for those who don't get degrees and who don't work in offices, with hands and backs strained by honest work.
More broadly, I can't help but be distressed that such a large section of our elites is becoming like Europe's elites with their views of the rest of society which does not share their view of how America should be governed. Heck, it is fashionable for some of our elites to day dream about the enlightened wisdom of China's elites. It is distressing because we lived through an age when the elites of the center of power in the world all had the same education and outlook. Before World War I, the ruling elites had more in common with their fellow rulers (even when not related by blood) than they did with those they ruled or governed.
That linkage at the top did not prevent a terrible war that ripped apart the West and damaged it deeply. I honestly can't say that this transnational elite caused World War I based on the divide between ruled and rulers. Nor can I point to a plausible way that such a linkage at the top in today's elites could lead to war tomorrow. But my unease at the growing gap between our governing class and the rest of the country that provides the basis of our wealth and defends our country is real nonetheless. No good can come of it, even if the impact does not extend to foreign affairs.
I just hope that I can keep my little portion of the gap bridged for one more generation.
