Political Elitism Considered Harmful?
September 21, 2008 7:40 am politicsMost of the article is an attack on Sarah Palin’s beliefs and abilities as a potential President, but there is one good general quote in this recent Sam Harris article.
Ask yourself: how has “elitism” become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn’t seem too intelligent or well educated.
September 21st, 2008 at 11:47 am
Elite and Elitism have different meanings and have to be used in proper context.
In the political sense an Elitist would be one who has a vested interested in creating policy that favors people within their own financially elite class.
September 21st, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Harris isn’t talking about financial elitism though; he’s talking about intellectual elitism. The Republicans, stereotypically being the Party of the Rich, would be especially hypocritical (and unconvincing) if they cried foul of financial elitism.
Also: if you remove “financially elite” from your statement, you get:
…which is more a statement for all politics (and politicians), not just one that is labeled “elitist”. More often that’s decried as favoring special-interest, not elitism.
September 22nd, 2008 at 4:50 am
It ain’t the intelligence that’s the problem, it’s the hubris. An elitist is someone who (presumably) has a high degree of performance and couples with it a distrust and distaste for everyone else.
The caricature of the sneering intellectual is what does the damage–not the high SAT score (or whatever).
-Marco
September 22nd, 2008 at 7:07 am
But what if that distrust/distaste is well-earned? That’s the situation that the Republicans are in to a large extent.