The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Elite Who Are Destroying America

Posted on | December 23, 2015 | 111 Comments

The habits of America’s “meritocratic” elite are the subject of an American Interest blog post that includes the phrase “educational assortative mating” — i.e., Ivy Leaguers marrying Ivy Leaguers, generation after generation, so that the influential elite form a separate caste, with no familial ties to the rest of the nation, and no direct knowledge of how most Americans live or what most Americans believe.

Professor Glenn Reynolds (himself a Yale Law alumnus) sees this as evidence that our national aristocracy “is becoming increasingly inbred and stupid,” but perhaps a more important point is that our soi-disant “elite” are arrogant, lack the capacity for self-criticism, and refuse to recognize the possibility that intelligence is not synonymous with virtue. The simplest disproof of this Ivy League superstition about “meritocracy” is Ted Kaczynski, Harvard University, Class of 1962, but if that didn’t clinch it, there’s Barack Obama, Columbia University, Class of 1983. Very intelligent people can do very bad things. Even if we stipulate not merely their high IQs, but also their good intentions, it is still quite often the case that smart, well-meaning people turn out to be incompetent fools whose hubristic sense of their own superiority is a chief cause of their folly. Have none of these people read David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest? Or are they just too arrogant to understand the fundamental lesson? It wasn’t just the Vietnam War that the liberal elite bungled. They proved themselves at least as inept in domestic policy as they were in foreign affairs, but I digress . . .

Charles Murray deserves an apology. The phrase “assortative mating” is immediately recognizable to anyone who has read The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. In the first 125 pages of that book, Murray and his late co-author Richard Herrnstein described how the advent of universal standardized testing and nationwide recruiting by the Ivy League and other elite schools had created a sort of IQ segregation in American society. Yet this valuable insight was overlooked amid an absurd liberal temper tantrum. Herrnstein and Murray dared to talk about IQ and race and, as a result, they were falsely accused of being crypto-Nazis and advocates of eugenics. To accuse Herrnstein and Murray of racism is analogous, really, to saying that anyone who criticized U.S. policy in Vietnam under the direction of McGeorge Bundy (Yale, ’40) et al., was guilty of being “soft on Communism.” One could hate Communists and also believe that the liberals in charge of U.S. policy were idiots, just as one can despise racism while believing that liberal rhetoric about race and the policies resulting from this rhetoric are profoundly wrong. If voting for Democrats and pursuing liberal policies could solve America’s race problems, then Detroit would be Heaven on Earth, rather than the dangerous and bankrupt municipal catastrophe that it is.

The immaturity and selfishness of Ivy League students like Jerelyn “Who the F–k Hired You?” Luther should serve to remind us that the admissions committee at Yale is demonstrably incompetent to choose our nation’s leaders. The Ivy League is decadent and depraved.

The administration, faculty, students and alumni of Yale and Harvard are destroying America, and it does not matter whether they are doing this accidentally or on purpose. However, if the decades of disastrous policy inflicted on America by the elite were the result of incompetence, we might expect they would occasionally do something good or right, by accident. As it is, everything they do is bad and wrong.

The liberal elite consistently support policies directly opposite to America’s best interests. The excuse that they are well-meaning bunglers is implausible. Only active malice — anti-Americanism — can possibly explain how we have been betrayed so badly by these “leaders” whom elite universities have handpicked and indoctrinated.

The graduates of Harvard and Yale are America’s most dangerous enemies, carefully trained for their assigned roles in accomplishing our nation’s destruction. Americans can never possibly hate the elite as much as the elite hate America. Alger Hiss (Harvard Law, Class of ’29) could not be reached for comment.




 

Category: Education

Comments

111 Responses to “The Elite Who Are Destroying America”

  1. Jed
    December 27th, 2015 @ 10:51 pm

    Absolutely! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you also, John!

  2. Shep
    December 27th, 2015 @ 10:52 pm

    We need more like you.

    More than 9 out of 10 of my kids assigned high school & middle school required reading was written by Communists or Socialists. I used the capital letters intentionally here.

    I raised hell at every opportunity. I did succeed in having Howard Zinn’s despicable “People’s History” removed from the summer reading & from the curriculum. The material was not tested either.

    If you’ve never opened the book, it is pure, unreconstructed Soviet Era propaganda, straight from the Frankfurt School. So much of it was word for word that I don’t know how he could claim authorship.

  3. Jed
    December 27th, 2015 @ 10:54 pm

    So true, John.

  4. john
    December 27th, 2015 @ 10:56 pm

    People’s History was a bad joke. Did you read the opposing Patriot’s History? One thing we did for our kids almost every night was eating dinner together and talking. It also gave us a chance to instill critical thinking skills about what they were “taught in school” Glad to say that it seems to have worked.

  5. Shep
    December 27th, 2015 @ 11:09 pm

    I have not read the Patriot’s history.
    ************
    At one point I told the kids I was pulling them out. This particularly upset my daughter. I was absolutely enraged about Zinn’s book being assigned as Summer reading.
    ************
    After many tears and much negotiation, my daughter agreed to read and accept critical writing assignments from me on one book of my choice for every book written by a Communist or Socialist assigned by the International Baccalaureate program. In return I allowed her to remain in the program. Even she was shocked at how many titles were involved. In a typical year they were required to read between five and 10 titles. After accepting the deal, she had to do a book with me for EVERY book assigned from then on, with two exceptions. I think one was I am Asher Lev and the other was Anthem. Interestingly her friends enjoyed Anthem more than any other assigned reading.

  6. john
    December 27th, 2015 @ 11:13 pm

    You had it right, Shep. Of course they would use Anthem instead of Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead. Libs hate the idea of Rand’s books getting read.

  7. Shep
    December 27th, 2015 @ 11:19 pm

    My kids got to read them.

    One of my Boy Scouts volunteered to read them.

    That boy and I often discuss them when we are working together or have a bit of free time in the evening.

    That boy is just finishing up Federer’s book on Islam. He was so excited about some of what he read that he could not wait for a campout, and called me at home in the evening to discuss certain chapters.

    My favorite was The Fountainhead. I liked the more positive world view. Of course there is more depth in Atlas Shrugged.

  8. john
    December 27th, 2015 @ 11:23 pm

    My biggest personal success was turning my younger daughter onto old movies. It started with GONE WITH THE WIND, and went on from there. She is still a movie enthusiast.

  9. Shep
    December 27th, 2015 @ 11:27 pm

    We took the kids to the Cowboy Hall of Fame on Christmas Eve.

    In order for them to be fluent in the American Culture we’ll have to guide them through all of the extant John Wayne films. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b51359c342ac2cf178a87f3a102a4ceb61f3e35826e1ead85770d00b4e83b578.jpg

  10. john
    December 28th, 2015 @ 12:08 am

    Woo Hoo! I cannot think of a better way to teach American Values! Have you ever seen the book Cultural Literacy? Pretty interesting stuff.

  11. Shep
    December 28th, 2015 @ 10:14 am

    I have not read that one either.