Elitism - Society Has Always Been Divided Top To Bottom, And The Best And The Brightest Will Always Rule

Harrison Potter III was one of America's original elite - scion of an old New England family descended from English royalty (The Fourth Duke of Northumberland), entrepreneurs (shipbuilding, trans-Atlantic trade), and financial investors (founders of the Bank of Pennsylvania in 1780 and the Bank of North America in 1781). 

 

He and his fellow early American aristocrats- the Cabots, Lodges, Astors, and Livingstons among them - formed a cadre of wealthy, well-bred, cultured, and well-schooled men who were to be the foundation of American capitalism.  They, and their politician colleagues all cut from the same patrician cloth - Adams, Hamilton, and Jefferson - were the essential core and the first movers of the new nation. 

They came to power and economic and financial authority because of their lineage and their inherited fortune.  America was still very British in its respect for the aristocracy, the kings, queens, and courtiers that ruled Europe, extended Western civilization to the still primitive reaches of human habitation, and were responsible for great art, music, literature, and architecture. 

It was only natural that their descendants, recently arrived in the New World, influential during the colonial period and brilliant founders of the new republic, should be accorded respect and awarded the privilege of power. 

This old Anglo-Saxon, New England elite has largely disappeared.  The families are on the social registers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and nuptials are routinely announced in the New York Times, but they have given way to the New Age of American elitism - the billionaires.  Gates, Bezos, Buffett, Brin, and a hundred more entrepreneurs who are building the new economy, the AI, virtual, cybernetic one. 

Before them were the great industrialists of the Twentieth Century - Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and Carnegie, a genius cluster of magnitude, influence, and geopolitical power. 

America - all societies for that matter - has always been ruled by elites, and although parentage has ceased to matter as much as it did in the early days of the republic - Bill Clinton was a hillbilly; Nixon and Reagan had simple Western roots; Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer - intelligence, savvy, and powerful ambition have been behind their rise to power.  

Elites have always had something special in common, whether roots in a storied European aristocracy, or simply brains, canniness, drive, and spirit; something that raises them above the masses, the herd, the many, the ruled. 

Although the country was founded on democratic principles, none of the ruling elite ever truly believed in populism.  Jefferson was the closest to popular participation in governance, but was chastised and cornered by Hamilton who said that it was folly to trust the unwashed.  At the very least, he advised Jefferson, there must be a buffer between the people and high decision-makers.  The Senate was the compromise, and although today it is no different from the rabble of the House of Representatives, it was envisaged as a House of Lords, a more reasonable, thoughtful, and more intelligent arm of government. 

 

Such privileged elitism is of course not new. Shakespeare wrote eloquently about the ruling Roman elites in Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus and other plays. The mob was always portrayed as credulous, easily led and manipulated, and dangerous.  Only the well-born, the sophisticated, the best and the brightest could assure the greatness of empire. 

The royal families of France, England, and Russia ruled for centuries, passing on power and wealth by lineage; and the dynasties of China, Japan, and Persia were no different.  Every society from East to West has always been ruled by powerful elites, a confirmation of nothing less than the bell curve - there will always be clusters of brilliance at one asymptote and these represent leadership in governance, culture, science, and the arts. 

The Soviet Communists thought that they could reverse the course of human history and dismantle longstanding social classes and private entrepreneurship, and replace them with the rule of the proletariat and socialist economic principles.  Of course, this new structure followed old, traditional lines.  The Politburo was the elite - a privileged, powerful, entitled group of men who ruled the proletariat. Equality was an idea in name only.  The Soviet Union was constructed like and acted no differently than any purely capitalist society. 

 

The rulers and producers of America come from elite backgrounds.  Bill Gates may have engineered Microsoft from a Seattle garage, but he had gone to Harvard.  The number of American presidents with an Ivy League pedigree is significant, although not surprising.  Elites are trained and educated to be elites in elite institutions. 

Cato the Elder was a philosopher-educator who devised an educational system for young Roman aristocrats who would rule the Empire.  Cato focused on classical learning – mathematics, history, logic, and oratory – but he also stressed the moral and ethical principles that underlie governance.  Young Romans were taught the values of honesty, courage, honor, respect, and compassion.

Oxford and Cambridge were founded on the same principles – the English noble who studied at Kings College in 1441 not only studied theology, philosophy, and ethics; but also the principles of proper and right service.  These Oxbridge graduates of the Middle Ages benefitted from the same academic rigor and discipline as did Cato’s students a thousand years before. 

Harvard and Yale were modeled after the elite British schools.  Not only did they focus on the same academic, ethical, and moral principles as their English counterparts, but they built their campuses in the same style.  Yale’s Gothic architecture is very much like Oxford’s.  Harvard’s less ornate Early Georgian style is much like the Tudor style of Cambridge.  Both British and American universities are divided into residential colleges.

 

Both universities have temporarily lost their way and become little more than progressive cabals.  Slave journals have replaced Shakespeare, literature has been deconstructed down to nothing, only bits and scraps of identity and victimhood.  Aristotle and Plato, old white men, have been decommissioned; but with luck and forward thinking, the old traditional aristocratic values will be reestablished, and the universities can once again provide the country with the best and the brightest. 

Wealth of course has been the common denominator for all elites in America, subsuming all social distinctions within its ambit.  Donald Trump is no Ivy League, Boston aristocrat, but a crude bar fighter, hustler, and con man.  His roots are deep in Americanism - a lowbrow, impatient, grasping, sequined society - and such classless individualism plus intellectual brilliance and social canniness has made him one of the political elite. 

The loser in the 2024 American presidential election, Kamala Harris, claimed that she was one of the people - her people in fact, people of color - but few bought that fiction.  This was not the woman of the ghetto, friends with ho's and pimps, hustlers, and dope peddlers, but a highly educated woman from an ambitious professional family.  She warn't foolin' nobody. 

John F Kennedy made it clear to all that he wanted his Administration to be filled with the best and the brightest, and so with that criterion and high standard, he combed Harvard, Yale, and Princeton for their top scholars; he canvassed America's most influential, successful, and principled families for offspring. He had no intention of making his Cabinet look like America.  He wanted to make it look like his America, a privileged, wealthy, highly intelligent elite with a sense of noblesse oblige.  His 'Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country' was not just a political slogan.

George Herbert Walker Bush was one of the old, Anglo-Saxon American elites, but his career was nothing but giving back, a man of patriotism, honor and principle - the very core of Cato the Elder's teaching and the bedrock principles of leadership. 

The sad, sorry, feeble days of the Biden Administration and their Diversity Equity Inclusivity (DEI) obsession are over and done with.  No more will identity, race, gender, and ethnicity be the meme for leadership.  Intelligence, intellect, confidence, and ability rule. 

The concept of elitism has never changed and never will, only its formation and expression will.  The old White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite - a well-defined segment of the American population is gone, but other ruling classes will replace it.  How that elite is formed, and of what it consists is unknown, but one thing is for sure - it will represent a small fraction of 'the people', a tiny demographic piece residing at the far asymptotic end of the bell curve, as always.