In Praise Of Privilege And Elitism - The Indelible Role Of The Best And The Brightest

Armand Fellowes had grown up a child of privilege.  His parents, descended on his father's side from the the Earl of Northumberland and his Bostonian descendants who helped found the Massachusetts Bay Colony and were thanks to inherited and earned wealth became scions of New England society.  His mother's family was descended from Walter Raleigh and the English Cavaliers and were instrumental in the growth of Jamestown, Albemarle Bay, and Tidewater Virginia. 

Armand was educated at Andover and Yale, joined his uncle's Wall Street investment banking firm, and was a multi-millionaire before he was thirty.  His privileged background, parental authority and influence, and his premier education were the foundations for economic and social success.  He married well, to a woman of similar fortunes, moved into a Fifth Avenue penthouse and a summer home on Nantucket, and became quickly one of America's best and brightest 

He was bemused at today's insistence on 'intellectual plurality' a thinning of the ranks of the cadres of brilliance that had characterized great societies ever since the first human settlements.  The courts of Louis XIV, the palaces of Emperors, shoguns, and shahs did not come from the peasantry but from the hereditary elites who had been brought up in an ethos of civilized pursuits. 

The teacher-philosopher Cato the Elder developed an instructional program for the future leaders of Rome, one which taught the importance of honesty, responsibility, understanding, compassion, and respect as well as the more traditional elements of governance.  Those under his tutelage were already educated by their families in the principles of noblesse oblige - the obligation of the privileged to lead and lead wisely. Cato's program was a supplement to this fundamental education. 

There was no questioning about the nature of leadership and the nature of the ruled.  Human society had always been divided by birth, privilege, duty, and responsibility.  Those who governed had one set of rules, those who were governed had another. 

Of course history is filled with revolutions, civil wars and political strife - that, too, is an endemic feature of human society.  Rome had its Caesar Augustus and Caligula.  Some Persian shahs were sun kings in their own right while others arrogated authority and turned into senseless marauders.  Yet none of these expected, natural ups and downs ever were enough to reverse the millennia-old social structures.  Soviet Communism was a mere historical blip.  The democratic Age of Cromwell was as short-lived, and the English quickly restored the monarchy. 

 

The United States which had tossed the ideas of inherited privilege, the divine right of kings, and the monarchical nature of rule, was never a flat democracy, a communal populism with socialist overtones. It was and has always been a society like all others, a stratified one, one of privilege and peasantry.  For all the talk about diversity and inclusivity; and for all the attempts of progressivism to equalize the social character of the Republic, privilege and elitism will remain just as they always have. 

The United States is currently going through a Communist-style period of 'revolutionary justice', an effort to dismantle the foundations of so-called white, privileged rule, and to replace it with an eclectic mix of multicultural identities.  Ability, intelligence, or the Cato-inspired ethos of enlightened leadership have been shelved in favor of racial, ethnic, and gender identity.  Every segment of society, every social stratum, every public and private institution must be diversified accordingly.  The idea of a universal, central, shared ethos of principle and the importance of high intellectual leadership are gone. 

How did this philosophy - one that ascribes the same socio-economic and cultural value to the migrant farm worker and the assembly line worker as to the investment banker, the CEO, the cyber-startup genius, and the Frank Lloyd Wright - ever gain traction and currency?  And most importantly where did this profoundly revisionist view of history ever come from? 

America is no different from the elite, privileged rules of Europe and Asia but without their royal trappings, crowns and mantels, swords and scepters.  America has always been run by an elite - industrialists, financiers, bankers and landowners which form a cadre of power, limited in theory by elected government, but wielding almost restricted influence.  There may not be a king and his court, but its modern equivalent.  Cadres, not courtiers rule.

Their permanence is granted not only through heredity but also an institutional environment which encourages, fosters, and supports privilege.  The Ivy League, no longer the redoubt of the Anglo-Saxon New England aristocracy of the past, is still the breeding place for excellence; and the businesses which graduates join - Wall Street, K Street, Silicon Valley East and West, and the boardrooms of multinational business - are the loci of high-energy, high-creativity enterprise. 

The trajectory is clear - class, breeding, and aristocratic upbringing, followed by the best secondary schools, followed in turn by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton; the best law and business schools.  The middle ranks of middle managers, white collar associates, and support staff are filled commensurately - public colleges and universities take up the slack and help fill out the organizations led by the elite. 

There was not a scintilla of doubt as to the wisdom, reality, and historical record of elite rule; and the attempts to deny the bell curve of ability were just politically-motivated chimeras.  The underclasses should be educated to perform the modest tasks for which they are suited, skilled in being maximally productive in the lower-echelon tiers and socially responsible citizens. 

Armand had given up on his crowd.  Many born to privilege and the noblesse oblige which it implied, had denied their birthright and joined the progressive movement, an ill-considered enterprise to reform society and to make it a more tolerant, inclusive, and collaborative place. Essentiality - life's inherent, innate competitive nature - is ignored under the assumption that it can be corralled and harnessed for good. 

It was not a matter of principle, but a matter of fact - privilege and elitism had been an essential, ineluctable, permanent aspect of human society since its first settlements. Human communities from the most remote Amazon tribe to Imperial Russia have been divided by ability and the power and influence which that confers. 

 

Armand had not one apology, regret, or bit of remorse or guilt for his status, wealth, privilege, and social influence.  There had always been men like him and always would be .