OK, but why ISN'T Trump a WASP? He's white. He's Anglo-Saxon. He is (at least nominally) a Protestant. And he's rich, with inherited wealth.
You just don't WANT him to be a WASP because you have an imagine of WASPs being more like Poppy Bush. But even stereotypes have more diversity than lefty liberalism allows.
9
Can’t read RD’s “magic wand” wish/vision (“Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile”) without wondering why he longs to return to the Holy Roman Empire? Haven’t we seen enough lately of the corrupt if not downright criminal ways and means of the Roman Catholic ruling order - including the conservative lay conspiracy hidden in plain sight on the US Supreme Court - than to wish for a return engagement of the HRE? Perhaps if RD were Catholic-raised and -educated, and I am, he’d see things very differently and come up with a better way to wield his wand.
25
“...an aristocracy that knows itself to be one might be more clearsighted and effective than an aristocracy that doesn’t.”
The “greed is good” meritocracy you so rightly disparage here indeed thinks it has earned it through hard work and smarts, and owes nothing to society. And it’s true that the G.H.W. Bush types knew their privilege and felt duty-bound to do something for the society that gave them that privilege.
But the source of the change of attitude among America’s elites is the Reaganite GOP propaganda that the government is here to harm all of us by wasting our taxes on social programs (in the form of free college tuition to food stamps to social security) that a self-made individual should not ever need. In other words, the notion that all you achieve is due to your efforts alone, and that you owe nothing to the society that in fact made your success (however modest) at all possible. It is a shame that propaganda has succeeded beyond our oligarch’s wildest dreams, severely damaging the government’s ability to function and provide the structure the middle class needs to thrive, and severely damaging the trust and respect of the American people for their government’s institutions.
To borrow from Reagan himself: The most feared words in the English language are “I’m a billionaire and I’m here to help save you from lazy Americans the government is enabling.”
34
Mr Douthat confuses nature vs nurture when he praises the old North east WASP aristocracy. He seems to believe that rather than the result of generations of privilige, wealth, and education, they are simply naturally bred for leadership. Their High church Protestantism assures their social position because doctrine teaches that their success Is proof of being among the Chosen.
The Industrial and information age parvenu plutocrats learned well from the old WASP aristocracy. Producers of great wealth acquire political power and use government to insure their new social and family status in perpetuity.
Only in the fourth and fifth generation will their parvenu descendants enjoy the patina of natural and entitled leadership that Mr. Douthat worships in the old WASP aristocracy represented by George H. W. Bush.
One might inquire, however, where shall we place the great grand children of Vanderbilt, or the children of Rockefeller or, indeed, the living children of “Poppy” Bush” . Why did their immense social privilige fail to create natural WASP gentlemen-philosopher-kings?
5
An excellent elaboration and worthwhile read about the "new (meritocratic) aristocracy" can be found in the June 2018 Atlantic in an article by Matthew Stewart (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/).
And yes, there once was a Roman Catholic (non-multilingual, non-multiracial) aristocracy in Ireland. How did that work out for the rich and the poor of Ireland? Hint: not so well for the poor.
11
The mass of mankind have not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred to ride them legitimately by the grace of God. -- Thomas Jefferson.
15
Stop talking. And get out your shovel.
First: your command of the English language seems in rapid decline, confounding (as you do) merit with money, worthiness with wealth.
Which is funny, because you spend a lot of space here denying that's what you're doing.
You miss the evident reality that success, acumen, merit are highfalutin synonyms for "hit the jackpot".
So Trump, the two year old millionaire, can say with a straight face (straight as he can manage) that he's the smartest, militariest, negotiatingest hombre in all of history. Those who want what he has feel obliged to agree.
Merit in America is an economic term. Nothing more.
You can have brains, do epoch-making artwork, record and report and plan and manage yourself to death, but if there's not money in it, you're nobody. In fact the better you are, relative to your financial state, the crazier you look.
Then there's your bizarre reliance on the most offensive of Remains of the Day verbiage. The dour 'responsibilities of wealth'' for example. The urge to 'service'. These are self-deceptions, luxuries of the most wealthy. They are vile mischaracterizations, as if only rich guys have something crucial to give their nation, or the will to give it.
Get the money bags out of the door and prepare for a flood of dedicated, creative, willful souls to storm the chambers of government, and make things better quick.
Like mid-terms 2018, with no Trump or Mitch to grab their axe handles and bar the entry.
28
These labels - "aristocratic," "meritocratic," "elite," etc. - are unhelpful and reductive. They enable Mr. Douhat to construct a reality that he can then judge using his own twisted criteria, but they don't advance understanding in any meaningful way. It's really time for Ross to move on.
23
Good read. I always think Ross is too keen on religion, and specifically Catholicism, but if religion has had anything to do with his talent, that’s definitely a point in it’s favor.
Yeah, what decency the WASPs possessed got used against them by the “post-modernists and neo-Marxists” that Jordan Peterson rails about, and then by the rest of the world against our country as a whole. So now the people that want to keep/fix Western civilization and the Enlightenment legacy are cast as deplorables, and any lie about them must be believed.
4
I would suggest that what Douthat is recommending is one of the issues explored in Thackery’s “Vanity Fair” - what makes a person a gentleman. It isn’t blood or property, but how one acts, especially how one acts towards others. And you can’t get more WASPish than citing “Vanity Fair” !
8
I immediately got the sense that Ross actually read the comments to his last column, the vast majority negative. That is, for me, by far the most instructive and cheery moment to come out of any of his always sort of tortured efforts to explain his catholic, conservative, antichoice views. I have never been able to see what Ross offers to NYT readers, but as you can tell, I keep looking.
16
At the expense of over simplification, I found this one of Mr. Douthat's better columns. Provocative, thoughtful and educational. I happen to be reading These Truths by Jill Lepore. Both readings poke at untraditional clarifications.
2
If we take Riss’ analysis seriously, the problem of today’s GOP can be traced back to a lack of noblesse oblige among the billionaires now running the party. And somehow that is a failure of society in replacing it with meritocracy in the mind set of the Mercers, the Uihleins, the Kochs, the Adelsons, the Spencers now engaged In brainwashing Republicans with Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, the NRA and disinformation on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Well there is no doubt about the important role of these folks in America’s ills. But the link to meritocracy in their upbringing is yet to be established.
5
Ross reveals he is arguing in bad faith when he suggests Elizabeth Holmes is an example of how the meritocracy doesn’t serve women well. Theranos was a fraud from front to back and didn’t deserve success.
3
Aristocratic hierarchies have always denied entrance and ascent to women. It should be interesting to people that women are lumped in with defined racial and ethnic minorities. What I am wondering is this: when Ross Douthat decided that he would like the world to be ruled by multi-lingual Catholics, had he already jumped ship from Protestantism? Was he just kidding in his article?
5
What Douthat doesn’t get is that it’s about the patriarchy, of which, he is a part because he declares he’s basically a papist. The existing meritocracy is merely a narcissistic extension of aristocrat's beliefs about themselves and the creation of patriarchal gate-keeping strategies to maintain power by proxy.
Trump and his outsized narcissistically abusive behavior is the embodiment of what Jung would describe as “the shadow” of the patriarchy itself. It's rising all over the world (Putin, MBS, Little Rocket Man) in a last ditch effort of the long dominant patriarchy to maintain traditional, hegemonic, hierarchical, male-dominated power structures—financial markets, the catholic church, political control, academia, cultural norms.
Too many men have become fish who don't notice the water in which they are swimming.
17
I have zero nostalgia for the old WASP sensibility. That none of them were corrupt is nonsense. These were people who believed in civic responsibility only because those below them were their charges. Wealth was not the defining characteristic, ancestry was. The culture was anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Black American. I don't believe they were racist since they welcomed into their fold foreign aristocracy from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. But I'll take a meritocracy any day, even though our problematic late capitalist culture values wealth over integrity.
10
Beyond the borders of the United States, this is on the money as a case against Emmanuel Macron, the ultimate technocratic meritocrat (or meritocratic technocrat), who somehow briefly managed to be seen (and somehow still sees himself) as an outsider – to disastrous results. The problem is, there is no tolerable alternative at the moment in France, a country where “noblesse oblige” ethics – a dubious proposition to begin with – died circa 1270. The democratic left is a shambles, and on the right, fascism beckons.
5
So you think it wiser to get rid of top universities and just let our best and brightest "learn" from local colleges and universities so as not to "rob" those communities of their smart ones?
Good grief!
6
All generalities — what is it that he would like to see changed, other than being put in charge?
2
One thing everyone needs to stop doing is saying we are a meritocracy. We are not a meritocracy: We are a plutocracy.
No merit is involved in the people who have risen to the top here (check out Harvard's admission policies for proof). We have always been run by a handful of very wealthy people, many of whom are not terribly bright. The White House is an obvious example of this, but there are many, many other examples on all sides of the political spectrum.
People talk about how dumbed down the average American is, but what about our elite? They are so dumb that they are willing to have the whole ship sink in order to make their millions/billions. Is that an example of a meritocracy?
16
The problem with meritocracy (in the US anyway) is summed up in “Wall Street” - when the main character proclaims “greed is good”. The pursuit of wealth is now an end in itself rather than a means to an end. In “Cabaret” it’s “money, money, money”. What has been lost, (in the US anyway) is any kind of moral compas in this pursuit. Anything goes. You can break laws, bend rules, even commit grand larceny as occurred by the Wall Street bankers with the out of control greedy manipulation of credit default swaps and subprime mortgages. The more recent Wells Fargo falsification scandal is another example. So are the money scandals and fraud associated with practically every current member (and those who have resigned) in the Trump dishonourable and dishonest coterie of villains. Finally the supreme example is Trump himself who has lied his way into office and continues to lie several times every day, and do deals with Saudi and Russian real estate buyers and those approving construction of his hotels, in order to continue amassing as much money as possible before he is ejected from office and (hopefully) thrown into jail. As someone once said - “Trump is a fraud, a phoney, a film flam man”. Such is American meritocracy.
5
Doubling down on being wrong: how very Trumpian.
There are two sentences here that will define Douthat's work from now on:
"This week I briefly trended on Twitter — a bracing experience for any columnist, because it means that you’ve done your job of provocation a little bit too well." -- this shows that all he's trying to do is provoke.
"if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile."
-- this shows that if you're not a Catholic, and you don't want to see a return to the conquistador movement, Douthat's guiding principles will never be for you.
I think I may not need to read Douthat anymore. I don't want a ruling Catholic aristocracy and I can find provocation in many other places, should I desire it.
16
The topic is a tough nut to crack in a couple of articles. RS overvalues the past and fails to grasp zeitgeist, and its irreversible roaring on Earth tat gets louder and louder every day. Such a discussion needs to incorporate population projections of the country and the globe for the year 2100, and demographic shifts. There are also Moslems, Hindus and Buddhists along with many others in the mix, and overwhelming majority of people have liked and embraced meritocracy. Meritocracy, with its shortcomings, is still the best known selection method to reduce human bias of any kind.
2
Wow, Ross really does some amazing gymnastics in order for his world view to make any sense whatsoever. He sure doesn't look that limber.
Sorry Ross, there is no meritocracy despite your belief in it. I know meritocracy gives you the sense that you earned the job you hold but the fact is there are thousands of others who would do your job better, be more insightful, offer better ideas, and be better for the society than you. Sadly they didn't have the opportunity, connections, belief in themselves, political views, or whatever that allowed you to rise despite their superiority.
And while you're at it, you should reconsider your concepts of elites and the ideas that WASPs relinquished their authority. Conservatives loves to perpetuate the myth of the Elites when really it is just rich people (many who are Republicans) and their desire to keep and expand the wealth they have amassed. You can believe it is about ideology and world view but really they are just manipulating stuff so they end up on top. There is no conspiracy per se as it has been done in the open and normalized. You can't create the income inequality we have without manipulation of the government who is supposed to protect us from the powerful but now is controlled by the powerful.
Maybe you should broaden your mind further and let go of the childish beliefs of Elites and Meritocracy and see the country for what it has become - a land for the wealthy to have their will be done by any means necessary.
13
Yes, as a nation many of us long for some sense of decorum. However, I would like to present the notion to you that the Catholics absolutely do not fit what you asking for in a ruling class, and so you should check your biases and reevaluate your preferences based on the actions - and not the ideals - of the Church.
You're not asking for a ruling class that says one thing and then does an absolutely abhorrent other thing. You're asking for one that takes its' leadership seriously. The Church takes its power seriously, but not its role in actual leadership, and while the past few decades have been bad history isn't much kinder. Like most aristocracies, the Catholic Church may perpetuate the idea of some sort of moral position they claim to hold, but behind the scenes the story is as depraved and flawed and human as ever.
Until the Catholic institutions come out and claim their rottenness from the inside out as fundamentally a part of their structure, they do not know who or what they are and would be unfit as rulers. The Church traffics in hypocrisy and doublespeak - in big issues and in the small day to day life issues - I've seen it my whole life and throughout my long Catholic education.
5
The photograph of Oak Bluffs accompanying this article is misleading. The Town of Oak Bluffs is not Waspish and never was Waspish. Oak Bluffs is home to hard working year round people who are clearly not Wasps and during summers every ethnic group is welcomed with open arms. The other towns on Martha’s Vineyard are more exclusive with their private beaches but they too in season are no longer populated by Wasps. In fact Martha’s Vineyard has been discovered by all and so much so it has degraded what made Martha’s Vineyard so unique. When the Island was more Waspish it was a nicer place. The nouveau rich had not yet descended bringing their over the top ostentatious non contextual mega homes along with their classless behavior. Oddly the old guard (Wasps) kept the prices down allowing for the middle class and blue collar workers to enjoy the Island too. The Wasps also maintained the open spaces etc. The Island is not elite in terms of psyches, that’s mostly gone with the exception of the ever rising costs of staying there.
6
Some meritocracy! A Wharton graduate who had a millionaire's salary when he was a child is now a President who verges into functional illiteracy. Privilege guarantees only that one will have power, not that one merits it. H.W. and the Donald--both scions of the rich who arrived as a function of what they were handed, not what they did with their hands.
As to those who think they have earned their merit on their own, look in the mirror and see someone who is deluded. Put you in a shantytown as a child somewhere and the odds are you're still there struggling to keep your head above water.
I include myself. Mother was a librarian who surrounded me with books. I never knew what it meant to go to sleep hungry. Take away these privileges and I'm still hustling to keep above water. As it is, I have the privilege of sufficient leisure time to read a couple of books every week.
7
No matter what system you implement, you'll always end up with the pigs declaring themselves more equal than others. And they'll use whatever power, money, and privilege they acquire (Acquired by whatever means the system allows. Or even doesn't allow *cough* Joe Kennedy *cough*), to create some version of a hereditary aristocracy. Come meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
4
Declaring that diversity is the penultimate ideal makes celebrating and declaring ideal behavior and accomplishments unlikely.
2
I find myself tired of Mr. Douthat's constant opining for some sort of packaged order. He seems to have persistent issues with grey, unsettled areas of life, and democracy. Then, his proposed solutions always, wistfully, harken back to some imagined ideal. Good god, man, look forward.
6
I wish I had said this: Trump was born on third base and thinks he invented baseball.
5
If Douthat’s previous column about aristocratic values was “misread,” it’s because he did a poor job of making his point. And today’s convoluted sequel does little to clarify anything except that his own WASPish pretensions are delusions of qualifications for cultural stewardship.
In his enthusiasm for a world frozen in time, he is wrong on two counts: 1) grossly romanticized history, and 2) the source of aristocratic “values.”
With a broad brush he paints a glorious past for the “primus inter pares,” but without any specifics as to their benefits. What was their role in slavery, or Native American genocide, or the endless class conflict? For example, in 1886 alone 350,000 workers went on strike across the nation, and were answered with brutal violence from those self-restraining WASP aristocrats who owned the factories.
Secondly, Douthat makes a false distinction between aristocracy and meritocracy, implying that aristocrats simply dropped from heaven with inherited powers. In fact, the aristocracy was born from hegemonic meritocracy, and it thrived on incestuous political connections. Jos. Kennedy made his fortune through insider trading. The Cabot Lodge family won wealth from colonial privateering, running rum and slaves, etc.
The more important question is: how does an aristocracy accommodate democracy? Does it foster it, or does it exploit it? Honest history reveals exploitation.
Ross: cultural stewardship demands honest history and a lot less elite fantasy.
9
Meritocracy implies the best MBA in the room is running GM, the person running the bank, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Chinese, German or whatever race, religion, nationality or gender is honest and won't take chances money. the broker telling you to buy knows when to. Is that true? The best and brightest rising to the top. Robert McNamara comes to mind as proof. Nepotism and cronyism still cast's It's spell in Wall Street, the Banks, the Unions, show business and the media. Let's not kid ourselves we're an Idiocracy exploited by a Kleptocracy.
5
A traditional witch hunt required a lot of dedicated labor; manufacturing spectral evidence, killing cats. building gallows, twisting rope, making knots, composing taunts for the victim, hanging.
Modern witch hunters simply hire lawyers to do the work. The spirit of self-sacrifice has been lost.
1
I rarely agree with Ross Douthat, but in this case, I do -- up to a point. Whether it be paternalistic WASP elites or current meritocratic ones, these privileged twits ultimately serve themselves, despite their protestations that they give back to society by donating to institutions that serve (but glorify themselves through their generosity) or break ossified traditions that hold back underclasses (vid. the so-called 'sharing economy'). You only have to look across the Atlantic to see where this is headed: the 'yellow vests' in France may be upset about fuel taxes, but the underlying grievance is with an elite meritocratic culture that cycles back and forth between government and corporations but never seems to experience the lives of those they rule, whether it be in the state or the marketplace. They are formed at the best schools (in France, the Grandes Écoles, in the US, Ivy League colleges); their early education used to be in private schools, now in elite segregated 'public' ones; they shun public service that would bring them in contact with their 'inferiors'; and they are a mutually-reinforcing society that occasionally allows newcomers, but only if they subscribe to the caste rules. It is hard to see that we have made any progress, and indeed in some sense Mr Douthat is correct in stating that replacing noblesse oblige with smug self-aggrandisement is a step back.
4
While correctly pointing out that the elite of old, WASPs, were not everyone who was white, Protestant and of English descent, but only those of the upper class, mainly of the East Coast, the writer goes on to portray the current alternative as one of racial diversity, minority and female advancement. He also writes of the backlash on his article in which wrote about some of the aristocratic virtues of the old WASP establishment in which it readers saw it as "a paean to white privilege".
And the fact is the whole idea of white privilege is based on sheer ignorance as to the socio economic status of the overwhelming number of whites in North America. Those who speak of it are speaking of the elite circles they inhabit and are completely ignorant about the reality beyond their small world.
Those who equate white with privilege need to take a road trip around the country, staying off the interstates and out of the large cities, and they will see a country that is overwhelmingly white and lacking any obvious privilege because of their skin color. The whites who voted for Trump did not do so because they were enjoying the class benefits their skin color bestowed on them.
So the whole idea of white privilege is based on the ignorance of privileged white who are ignorant and oblivious to the world beyond their privileged cocoon.
2
After reading Douthat's columns for several years now, I think of hem as the Douthat's Variations: a series of connected, beautifully composed essays on a single theme of conservative pining for the "good old days" that only were good for few.
In other words, today's column and last week's, are, as he noted here, "paeans to white supremacy."
6
"(Without the sense of duty, self-restraint and noblesse oblige that WASPs at their best displayed." And the difference between this complaint and those which are leveled at the nouveau riche is? "(Y)ou have a mass upper class segregated from demoralized peripheries." Seriously? He really believes the north eastern and southern elites sense of superiority did not choose segregation over mongrelization? That they were not terribly disappointed when their son or daughter married beneath their station? I am not sure where this gentleman gained this flawed perspective but flawed it is.
Seems that what your saying is that meritocracy isn’t any different at its core but there is an honesty about it that WASP culture lacked. For all it’s faults, the meritocracy isn’t patronizing and doesn’t pretend to be out for anyone but themselves. It’s no wonder then that voters are done with old guard Republicans.
Douthat: " if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile."
Ah, a theocracy ruled by Catholics. Did you know that Europe tried that in a millennial-long period fondly called the "dark ages"? Some of us have moved beyond that dream.
Is there any room in your world for atheists?
9
An elegant riff on "noblesse oblige", which is not among the meritocracy's ten commandments but ought to be.
2
Recent history shows that the behavioral
traits WASPs embodied made America
great and 'the city on hill" that the world
looked upto. Since money has become
virtue and lack of ethics in accumulating
that money has also marked the decline
in public life here and lessening of
influence abroad. Those bank executives
with their degress from the prestigious
universities created the biggest
financial scandal, caused the job
losses for millions and virtually
brought the economy to its knees.
None of them went to prison due to
decline in ethics and corruption
says a lot about so called meritocracy.
Arresting the Chinese exective
and making noises about violation
of American laws reeks of sheer
hypocrisy. Surely the bank executives
are smiling reading the news of arrest.
2
Noblesse oblige demands that you help those less fortunate because there but for fortune go you. That value probably came from Christianity (at least for the WASPS). It is said that the New Testament mentions helping the poor about 1500 times.
Christianity and religion in general have fallen on hard times. So has education's role in inculcating values. So has the family. So has the community. What has defeated them all is capitalism. We have all become competitors and members of tribes. We have all become victims, which is a wonderful excuse not to have noblesse oblige.
In Europe after WW I, both capitalism and socialism failed to protect people from meatgrinder wars and economic collapse. People turned to fascism. When fascism was defeated militarily, people turned to liberal democracy, which meant containing the capitalist engine with liberal management by technocratic means. It was a synthesis of capitalism and socialism.
But capitalism never gave up, and now liberal democracy is being judged as capitalism and socialism were in the 30s. It has failed to protect the people, too.
We know this. The expectations of whites are not being fulfilled, and the dreams of women and minorities have been only slightly realized. Liberal democratic managers have skimmed off the top just like managers did in the USSR.
Adjusting the management, or its policies, or doing away with it won't fly, because a shared moral underpinning no longer exists. Make America Generous Again.
3
Meritocracy, as defined by young American families, means top grades, test scores and acceptance to a top college. Yet those don't equate to success in the real world, not by a long shot. They need to be coupled with social skills, a sense of humility and a belief in something bigger than yourself. The old WASP culture, George H.W. Bush included, embodied that and tried, with mixed results, to pass it onto his children. The meritocracy we're living has been revealed as inward-facing, self-absorbed and grasping.
2
Ross would prefer ”a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile.” Maybe he means this purely as a joke, but to me it reveals his preferred world, based largely on the Catholic Church, where an unelected, unaccountable priestly elite rules everyone else. No thanks. With all its challenges, I prefer a society where there is at least some chance of personal opportunity for growth and leadership beyond inherited class, whatever one’s background, rather than an unelected elite who rules us all with a sense of noblesse oblige.
5
How much genuine fondness for H.W. is there and how much is a maudlin, media-fueled show? In the last week we've read that he learned about the lives of other Americans through his duty censoring their mail home as a young officer, that he liked to flirt with Maureen Dowd, that he diligently read the Presidential daily briefing, etc. Others remind us that he bought houses in Houston that had racially restrictive covenants attached, that he was against the Civil Rights Act, etc. We are told he was decent man with nice manners. I haven't seen anything that persuades me that he had acted strongly in support of real convictions toward liberty, justice, or opportunity for all citizens, or that he had much
empathy for those beyond the pale of his social circle. In consequence, if George Bush, Sr. is to be the archetype of a perished aristocracy, I say, be gone, and, Ross, be still! Give me LBJ any day, warts and all.
8
"Hey, you asked..." I'm a Buddhist and hopefully know both religious arrogance and religious humility as a result of my immersion in real moral culture. And here's what seems to be beyond the moral reach of religious dogmatists - nothing in the exquisitely turned arguments you make helps us in a practical way. Meritocracy or aristocracy or whatever does not move us forward in the ways that count unless coupled with a sense of compassion and decency and fairness. Until the self-important folks on all sides who insist that they alone are the possessors of "truth" humble up and, most importantly, shut up, then the divided world will stay divided.
3
American meritocracy is nothing more than net worth. Money determines who merits and who doesn’t. It also includes a high number of two-bit crooks, a la Trump, who believe that their net worth is synonymous with their IQ, when often that net worth was inherited and their IQ was not.
I’ll buy Mr. Douthat’s definition of his favorite elite, without the catholic label. I would prefer agnostic, which is more in line with our constitution’s religious establishment cl
4
It seems any president that we elect will have short comings of some sort being human. It is an important lesson that Trump is giving the general American public that is not part of the Trump cult that character matters. A president who lies freely about any issue in order to present himself as what he is not. A president who was sued some 4000 times, ran a fraudulent Trump University and appeals to racism and used Birtherism to enter politics is not suitable as we are finding out almost every day by his corrupt cronies indicted. A president who brings his family into the White House having no governmental experience and making them co-presidents allowing them to conduct foreign policy in order to line their pockets now and when TRump leaves office. Voter beware.
5
"A disappointment with the meritocracy that has risen in its place." What disappointment would that be? Surely not the disappointment with the amoral con man currently our president. He is not the product of any meritocracy.
And, "the meritocratic ideal ends up being just as undemocratic as the old emphasis on inheritance and tradition.." Really? How is the meritocratic ideal undemocratic? Once again Ross makes a claim without supporting it with any facts.
And, "WASPy Barack Obama..." How exactly is Barack Obama a white Anglo Saxon Protestant?
And, "meritocracy segregates talent rather than dispersing it. It actually "robs" localities of their unqualified leaders." Unqualified leaders like Trump for example?
And, "the typical meritocrat is born on third base, hustles home, and gets praised as if he just hit a grand slam." Ross fails to give examples of this claim.
And most of all Douthat gives up the Protestant Trump as an example of the meritocracy!
And, "meritocrats are often educated to be bad leaders.." How exactly does that happen? We lack great leaders in this country because we are a capitalistic country that prizes the acquisition of wealth as a necessity of living a happy life. We fail to teach our children self sacrifice for the greater good. We fail to teach our children our history and their responsibilities as citizens. Instead our kids focus on acquiring more and more things at any cost to the future of the country and the world. Thus, Trump.
1
George H.W. Bush was born on third base but decided to go back to the plate and bat like everyone else. He served in WWII when he could have gone to Yale. He came down to Texas to make his fortune when he could have stayed among the Yankees. The character assassination speech by Ann Richards ticked me off and contributed to her loss to George W. Bush in 1994.
3
The most important thing to remember is that Douthat's aim is to provoke, not inform. So don't expect any objective presentation of facts.
The second thing is that Douthat's heritage is entirely WASP with all the benefits of an upper class upbringing, including the classic prep school-to-Ivy education. That he and his family are recent converts to Catholicism doesn't give them any personal experience as a historic underclass (ethnic Catholics). And his suggestion that American upper classes diversified because WASPs simply permitted it is factually untrue.
Once you realize that Douthat starts with provocation and pretense, the deep flaws in his arguments become more evident.
7
This is an outstanding column. And it has the added benefit of articulating what we all sensed but could not quite describe: Obama comes across as a semi-WASPy figure.
I can hardly wait to read the comments. I expect much gnashing of teeth -- "What, moi, a nouveau-WASP? Gaia forfend!"
2
The entire premise of this piece is in question. We do not have a meritocracy. The most immediate and obvious example is that the most powerful person on earth hasn’t earned it. He was born into lots of money and a system that happens to reward and be fascinated by brash ignorance, unblinking mendacity and vulgar branding. This is not earning ones keep, it is taking advantage of those who need to be entertained and distracted by the pain and seemingly unfair elements of modern society.
3
The "caravan" of Honduran migrants seek to enter the US because, compared to most places in the world, living in this country - even as a poor immigrant - is like being "born on third base".
Mr. Douthat,
you're confusing your readers. You conflate meritocracy with power structure. The latter may or may not reflect merit depending on the context. Most comments on your column commit the same fallacy.
Merit = f(inborn aptitude, energy spent toward actualizing the aptitude).
Even in a meritocracy, merit does not, nor should it, guarantee success.
What merit does is simply increases the chance for success, and this is all it's supposed to do.
Imperfect as it is, meritocracy is the best game in town, as has been proven in social arrangements of different kinds from Nobel prize (not the kangaroo peace or literature ones) and Wimbledon to capitalisms of USA, Europe, China, and Russia.
A perfect meritocracy, while desirable, is impossible, because as humans our core social structure is family. The well-being of our families is the #1 motivator. Take it away, and our productivity will plummet.
The bottom line: aristocracy is fine and dandy as long as it goes hand in hand with meritocracy. Democracy can be helpful in providing checks and balances.
The measure of societal functionality and future health is its competitiveness, since our world was born of and stands on competition.
P.S. It's time we substituted the crude SAT and GRE (let alone essays and phony recommendation letters) for a more sophisticated test combining measures of IQ, creativity, originality, and ambitiousness.
1
It’s not just elites that “knew who they were”, it’s across the board. For all the wealth and advancements we have today, the markings of despair are far deeper - homelessness, drug abuse, suicide are all far higher that the supposed oppressive 1950s. I think the key change was the “it’s all about me” of the late boomer / early gen-X era. Until we all care about the welfare of our families and communities, things are not going to get better.
1
Ah, Ross, you came very close to the Truth but shied away. Aristocracy and meritocracy suffer from the same fault: vanity. Both believe earthly privilege is born solely of human effort, while in truth it is Divine, a gift from God. The problem is we have fundamentally rejected God’s first great commandment, and therefore fail miserably on His second.
It was fascinating to read Douthat's piece stumping for an imagined American aristocracy. Fascinating to see the circuitous, tortured logic, at any rate. Maybe Douthat even believes what he wrote but it reads like a case of furious ret-conning to get out of an untenable position.
The basic problem is this: aristocracy is anathema to the concept of America. The whole point of the American experiment was to have a nation founded on laws where everyone was equal before the law, doing away with entrenched hierarchies, aristocracy, and government decisions informed by religiosity instead of logic. That was the plan, anyway.
Bush 1 was an appalling president... but he had social skills and manners unfathomed by Trump. Bush 1 was also a champion of the same privilege and backroom dealings that allowed him to go from Yale to the CIA to the White House. Not sure why Douthat can't see this, but probably has a lot to do with the enduring fantasy spun by Ayn Rand of a global cabal of like-minded zillionaires who, if we will only just accede to their superiority, will make all the tough decisions and we don't need to worry our pretty little heads over it anymore.
7
Douthat's last paragraph, "But I do want to raise the possibility that an aristocracy that knows itself to be one might be more clearsighted and effective than an aristocracy that doesn’t, and that the WASPs had at least one clear advantage over their presently-floundering successors: They knew who and what they were."
Clear sighted and effective at what? Knowing who and what you are in the context of being an aristocrat is not really knowing who and what you are as a human being.
Somewhere along the line one my ancestors killed a bunch of heathens during the crusade and had "von" bestowed to his name. Ever since then, we hold a special status in German culture. Why and for what?
I grew up being told we are better than others, the neighbors in our new found land in rural Canada were called proletarians. My trajectory was known from the moment of my birth and once I was old enough to understand what that meant, I rebelled with everything I had and escaped it. I wanted my life, not theirs.
I loathe the patronizing noblesse oblige claptrap with a passion. Born into privilege blinds you to the problems of those not so blessed. My parents would denigrate the welfare receiving classes, boasting, 'We came to Canada with nothing and look at us now", not realizing how many doors had opened for them because of their status.
Aristocracy imparts arrogance, a separation from the everyday dirt and beauty of humanity. It's an archaic notion, not needed for our awakening.
3
Ross’s nostalgia for WASP aristocracy reminds me of those gorgeous ads for Ralph Lauren and Tiffany that draw us into a more gracious American myth. Beautiful, but a myth nonetheless.
There’s much to be said for being aspirational, but not this way.
Why use the word aristocracy, which clearly connotes hierarchy, at all? Why not say that instead of meritocracy alone, character counts?
Time for our annual screening of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
4
Isn’t it funny how those defending meritocracy are already on the top?
2
Ross Douthant, I can’t quite understand your, and many other pandits to be honest, obsession with elites. Who are they, which are more influential in the country at large, etc.? Is the elite someone who is talking about trendy issues somewhere in academia or the one who is silent but actually has influence on specific policies that are implemented in the country? What I see is moneyed interest (true elites?) actually running the country in an economic sense, and christian religious interests (another elites in bed with money) forcing all kind of legislation that set this country back. They together have been setting the course for this country at least last 4 decades. They have a very powerful propaganda behind them that is ultimately forcing the conversation to their liking. MSM seem so impotent in comparison. Trump is their partially unintended consequence.
Then we have American Voter that is totally confused, selfish and uninformed. Half of them evidently vote for something that is against their, and their children, economic interests and now they are living an absurd dream of America that never existed. The elites that matter in this country have those Americans in the pocket.
Is Bill Gates or Zuckenberg an elite? So what influence do they have that is outside their technological products? Or if they do support educational and science causes what influence do they have on actuall education and science in national policies?
2
What is really missing in today's America is a sense of social responsibility—the belief that whatever I have comes as much or more from others as it comes from myself. Related to that is a sense of respect for others' expertise and a humble recognition, that no matter how great or small my own accomplishments, I am not expert in all things and need to respectfully defer at times to those whose expertise is greater.
This attitude of respect for and duty to others may have been part of WASP "good breeding." But an aristocracy of any sort limits itself by excluding from influence many people of great merit and granting excessive influence to many of mediocre talent. And of course it can also empower scoundrels—those aristocrats who fail to absorb the lessons of good breeding but still advance because of the advantage of birth.
A diverse meritocracy is certainly a better idea than an aristocracy. But for meritocracy to work, all of us must be as "well-bred" as the WASPs. That means having that sense of social responsibility and of having respect for others, whether we are the one rising in the meritocracy or the one staying put. That kind of good breeding is what America now lacks. Instead we have egoists of all sorts, some with real skills and some without.
4
Possibly, the loss of an ethical leadership stems from what Mark Twain noticed in his America: “Americans used to desire money, now they fall down and worship it.” What we need most are true statesman, who may already have enough money—itself an idea not often accepted—and progress to being leaders for the sake of our society, incorporating a vision beyond materialism and instant gratification.
Honestly, the very premise of this article cuts against its content. Douthat argues for a particular benevolence and duty of the WASP elite blindly, with the assumption (read bias, or perhaps even prejudice) that those elites he is so fond of actually were benevolent and dutiful. Ask Sally Hemings, ask thousands (millions) of abused children, ask the mistresses and the prostitutes, ask the slaves they owned, the women they harassed and abused, the marginalized people whose effort they profited from without paying them fairly, all while taking great care to keep them
from advancing into their realm.
To blindly accept that the WASP elites were benevolent and virtuous only betrays Douthat’s privilege - he believes that because he benefited from their system, it is good for everyone, and so he defends his benefactors. Many of us know the dark, self-serving, decidedly non-virtuous, non-benevolent side of this elite. To blindly support them is to blindly support that too. To the extent Douthat is arguing for virtue and values, it is surprising how many violations of such virtues and values he is willing to ignore. But I guess when you’re famous (or elite, or white, or male, or simply chosen) they let you do it.
2
Let us not forget it was F.D.R. who said' Northern Europeans are the forward race". Meritocracy has its privileges.
1
Bravo, Brett. You are absolutely right, and your intellectual honesty and well written essay make it worth for me to keep subscribing to the NYT.
People born to privilege, old money, and traditions often feel obliged to help others. The late George Bush was an example.
People who are propelled by merits’ alone usually have a need to continuously prove themselves. They often step on their competitors to get to top in their cut-throat drive to reach their goals.
I have seen it myself how self-made successful people are often driven by an enormous ego. And it does not matter that they are male or female; black, white, or Hispanic; Catholic, Protestant, or Jew.
3
A meritocracy is a less flawed system than a social aristocracy, theoretically allowing some sharing of wealth and power. But the 21st Century American meritocracy is limited to the specific solipsistic goal of making money. We nostalgically value duty, honor and country. Our common national cause, 9/11, has motivated some into public service, but few Americans have been in uniform. Religious institutions are fading, they once communicated the moral values Americans use to pride, charity and community. America is continually reinventing itself. We have reluctantly pushed back dictatorships, racism, environmental exploitation. We are capable as a nation to rediscover the importance of duty, honor and country. Perhaps the next generation will realize it has enough money, education, and social influence to focus on the ongoing American social experiment and make America “Greater”, by making it more equal for all. The meritocratic elite might wake up to see that the American dream is not accomplished when it has amassed a fat bank account. Being an American is a journey of forming a more perfect America and leaving a legacy to others.
In today's political climate, I do not see many elite Republican WASPs confronting the chaotic policies of our current president - but I have seen quite a few of the new middle-class meritocrats becoming politically active. In the 2018 midterms, I met many middle-class independents and former Republican voters who were helping to get out the vote for our local Democratic congressional candidate. I see this as a big step to get more rational public policies in place. These folks are working constructively for change, and they are the people you should be celebrating... not some old tired WASP cliché like the Bush family.
1
Mr Douthat is extrapolating the failures of the Republican Party too far. A diverse group can bring forth an excellent meritocracy. I really see a lot of high achievers in the Democratic leadership. But a one dimensional group is prone to selecting flawed leaders. Leaders with the most exclusive ideals are the most popular. To make it worse, they reward tokenism, which gives a false impression of diversity
Because we live in a globalized society and because China is poised to overtake US as the largest economy perhaps is befitting to remind us of the birth of meritocracy - China - and the conditions in which it was birthed. In the fourth century BC the seven Chinese kingdoms were warring for two centuries, engaged in devastating wars.
At the same time, the external, existential threat presented by the northern Xiongnu, the Proto Turko-Mongol tribes was imminent.
That is when in the kingdom of Chin, the most western of the seven and the first in the line of fire came Shang Yang, a minister who brought what is known as Legalism, the origins of meritocracy. It was a comprehensive contract between the state and its inhabitants through which each and every citizen was required to become productive and beneficial to the kingdom. Hard work and results were rewarded, laziness punished. Nepotism was dispensed with, advancement was predicated on competence irregardless of social station.
The kingdom of Chin became a highly productive place which attracted talent from surrounding kingdoms, which were mismanaged. Its armies grew strong.
Chin began conquering the other Chinese kingdoms. It succeeded and united them in China that we know by Chin Shi Hunag Di, the first emperor.
The lesson we could derive from this story is that US, divided as it is now and ruled by an incompetent president must take a lesson from history.
US politicians should be measured by merit, and only by merit!
1
Duly chastened, Ross Douthat provides an essay which is closer to the acceptable point of view.
But large groups of people are often wrong. And journalists should be enabled to explore points of view that differ from the liberal catechism without being ridiculed on Twitter.
What troubles me is that liberals try to squelch diversity of thought.
And that increases the likelihood that the body politic can make grievous errors.
Right now my concerns are about Donald Trump. How did he get elected? It is somewhat difficult to remove him now that he is president, as the Mueller investigation shows.
Part of the problem is that liberals were tempted to characterize their opponents as racists and bigots. There was little tolerance with the diversity of views that is actually needed for a democracy to function.
Many conservatives regarded this insistence on conformity of viewpoint to be arrogant and sanctimonious.
Calling people raceist because they oppose open borders makes rational discussion of illegal immigration impossible.
It makes the rise of demagogues like Trump more possible.
1
Meritocracy is just another word for racism.
2
What Douthat is lamenting is a system of upper class education epitomized by the relationship of Dr. Peabody of Groton to FDR. This Northeastern American knockoff of the English public school system started from the premise that the boys it was educating were born with the superior opportunity to rule (what is now denounced as privilege) and that it was therefore necessary to teach them a combination of Christian humility and Greco-Roman public spirit in order to make them honest, honorable and humane rulers of the mass of people unfortunate enough not to have been born with their God-given advantages. It used to be called character, and the WASP educational system valued it more than academic ability.
Many years earlier, Jefferson called it "the natural aristocracy of talent and virtue," in competition with "the artificial aristocracy of mere wealth and birth."That's the combination that produced the Roosevelts, Harrimans, Achesons, Bushes, McCloys and other WASP leaders of the Depression. It was deeply inegalitarian, but in a paternalistic way.
The model meritocracy is mandarin China where, like the modern US, any smart poor boy could in theory rise to the top, but in practice the sons of the wealthy had superior access to the necessary education. But the Chinese meritocracy educated its elite on the basis of paternalist moralism. Since about 1970, ours recognizes nothing but the individual pursuit of happiness. We don't teach noblesse oblige any more.
4
As stated by Mr. Douthat, he would, if he had his way, have an all Catholic elite from Canada to Chile. Yikes. So bring back the Inquisition basically, with a liberal sprinkling of pediophile priests running the western hemisphere?!?
4
Well, "....a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile." You mean, A Hapsburg-of-the-Americas kind of domination?? Don't think I can go for that. Maximilian gave that a go 150 years ago.
3
1. Women were left out of your defined WASP'S.
2. What is your resentment about Not being highly enough placed in the Meritocracy?
3. Your ideal elite would exclude vast portions of the population, plus we have already witnessed Roman Catholic hierarchy in control. It isn't pretty.
4. Other than Trump, not really a Republician, you appear unable to assess the failings of the Republician Party now in control. i.e do you agree with whay is going on in Wisc., Mich., N.C.?
Still in your line up, other than Trump the only 2 failures you name are 2 women. Really are there no men who fit in that category you can mention by Name?
3
Both meritocracy and autocracy are governed by the Peter Principle -- both inexorably spiral toward mediocrity.
People who are declared to be "the best" will never empower anyone who is clearly better then they.
In politics, the solution is strict term limits; in business, it's (en)forced (early) retirement.
3
Very interesting and provocative (which is a good thing!).
I especially like the insight that, all else being equal, at least the aristocracy recognized that they were privileged and therefore had a certain responsibility, while those who get to the top of the meritocracy believe they have earned everything they achieved. There must be a lot that we can do with this insight, without disbanding the meritocratic ideals themselves. On the whole, it would be great if the country were ruled by the best and brightest, but a quick look at 3 of the last 5 presidents shows how far from true this is ... so something clearly isn't working!
Puttin' aside the fact that the ancestors of your exalted WASPs starved my ancestors and forced the survivors to emigrate to 'these shores' -- where they could use us as pitiably-paid servants w/o rights; and where, even 'as at' 1976, upon my law school graduation, their 'premier' and 'dominant' law firms (for 'patricians-only') had no interest in an Irish-Italian "American" 'mutt' with a law degree from Fordham ... Well ... You get the foul picture of your-lieges-not-mine.
6
Diversity, per se, has no merit, except biologically. A more diverse gene pool should aid survival, all else equal. The social systems we've overlaid on our biology (including status and position based on competence and merit) cancel out much of this advantage, however. This is a good thing.
1
Meritocracy is not the issue at all. Rather the issue is that many of the new elite still have a working class mindset even thought they earn greater incomes.
They have no sense of noblesse oblige. Chief among these new elites is Hilary Clinton who refused to recognized the millions of working class lives harmed by globalization, specifically the American jobs sent to Mexico and sent to China as well as the misuse of H1-B Visas to replace American Tech workers with imports from India.
While during the campaign Trump spoke out against Carrier sending 2000 Indiana factory jobs to Mexico and while Trump spoke out against Disney replacing 250 American tech workers with Indians hired through H1-B Visa abuse, Clinton was silent on both counts.
She *was not silent*, however, when she gave 3 talks for $675,000 to Goldman, the icon of Wall Street and the financial crisis, *without the media present*. Clinton also was not silent when she called Trump's supporters who were suffering from globalization and job loss, "deplorables."
Had Clinton understood noblesse oblige, she would have spoken out as Trump did against Carrier and Disney and would have criticized Goldman. She would have likely won the election as well.
Stunning to me is how the party of FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ could nominate Clinton, a candidate with values so far from their own. Had the Democratic elites practiced noblesse oblige they would have elected a winning candidate.
6
I don't usually agree with Mr. Douthat, but there was a lot to the issues he raised here. It is a law of nature that cream rises to the top, barring unnatural and extensive interference by committee or government. Unless one wants to live in a universe of mediocrity, there should be a place for Ivy Leaguers, Olympic Gold Medalists, Academy Award Winners and--Yes!--The Four Hundred Families. Why not? Are we going to regulate and criminalize ambition and aspiration just because some others can never hope to achieve them due to some fluke of birth, be it geography, family wealth, or genetic endowment?
I certainly do not have the solution, nor does Mr. Douthat: How can we allow, encourage, and nurture the pursuit and maintenance of excellence (something our Republic has cherished from its inception), while continuing to instill a sense of obligation and noble spirit that comes with such privilege? The price certainly should not include lowering our standards or giving up our dreams.
1
So, what you are saying is that it doesn't matter how they get it, when wealth and privilege are concentrated too much in the hands of too few it is bad for democracy and humanity. I think Ross is making a good argument for government redistribution of wealth and privilege.
2
Meritocracy is no better than the aristocracy it replaces, because it becomes a different type of aristocracy, but an aristocracy nonetheless.
This entire argument is fallacious from the shores of its false premises to the barren deserts of its sweeping and unsubstantiated generalizations.
And then there is its crashing and anticlimactic conclusion, that somehow the original non-meritocratic aristocrats at least had some kind of self-knowledge. Where did that get them and where did it get American Society?
And as for Douthat's Grand Finale suggestion that a multilingual, multiracial Catholic aristocracy might be the best kind of elite? I think we need only to think of how this aristocracy handled rampant child abuse within its ranks. Clearsighted and self-reflective are not the first words that come to mind .
4
I don't usually agree with Ross Douthat. (For example, I fled the Catholic Church around the time I turned 21.) But he has isolated an important issue here. We have not educated our children to value, even revere, service to the community. I fault the dominant, out-of-control, fundamentalist capitalist ideology that has become "political correctness" over the past 30 years. In my University, I see too many professors with just the kind of arrogant sense of privilege that Douthat describes: I worked for it, its' mine. The question is how to restore the essential idea that we need government to do the things we can only do together, the things that keep our culture working but aren't profitable enough to be handled by capitalist businesses. How do we restore the truth that is inscribed on the Treasury building: Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.
6
I expect Ross's reference to WASPs was a semi-conscious bit of provocation that unfortunately detracts from his main, and most important argument, which is that a meritocracy is fundamentally amoral, and contributes to social breakdown, in much the same way that capitalism does. It is a usual engine for individual achievement, but not a useful way to encourage cooperation. Furthermore, today the game is so rigged that the idea our society is truly a meritocracy is merely an annoying hypocrisy. What is needed is a way to re-generate a sense of society and cohesion. The WASPs had this, but that is not the only way that this sense of being part of a group can be generated.
2
Hate to say it, but isn’t the writer pining for a return to the past? Isn’t he simply saying make American people great again? His version of greatness is probably different from the red hatters, but the wishful backward glance is the same.
The past shows us every possible human evil. It also demonstrates every human virtue and nobility.
This beauty and ugliness is here in the present, right before our eyes, where we can actually participate and have a say in events.
3
I think this column conflates, out of nostalgia for the elder Bush and dismay at the Republican party, something that didn't exist.
It's utter hogwash to say we were best served by a WASP elite class, who knew they were elite, but tempered their distaste for the unwashed masses with "noblesse oblige".
No, some WASP families became wealthy earlier in our nation's history than others (or were rich when they arrived). They were educated and rose to power because of the money.
This "aristocracy" vs. "meritocracy" is nonsense. Who thinks up this stuff? You say the elite decided to dissolve their aristocracy (What? Was it a secret meeting?) in favor of a "meritocracy" where "anyone with talent could climb the ladder"
Isn't that the promise of America? That anyone with talent & drive can move up the ladder? Thank God for public education and a country where people other than wealthy WASP "blue bloods" can succeed financially (or at least have a chance).
You speak of "meritocracy's ruthless solipsism" (?) and cite as examples the women Thanos (guilty of fraud) and Sandberg (part of election scandal tarnished Facebook). Capitalism itself is ruthlessly selfish.
The idea that a cultured Republican elite took better care of the people is nonsense. Sure, Bill Buckley was infinitely more sophisticated than Trump, but Republican policies have picked our pockets, grown our debt and enriched the already rich.
And I respect your religious choices Ross, but a Catholic theocracy? Nooooo!
1
Political commentary in this country has largely narrowed to minor variations on two perspectives: outrage at Republican/Conservative/religious lies, hypocrisy, and exclusiveness; and outrage at Democratic/Progressive/politically-correct arrogance, self-righteousness, and the aforementioned lies and hypocrisy. Douthat avoids both tropes and maintains a sense of humor and detachment. As such, his writing points past the current, nightmarish situation in this country,; most other writers promote and revel in it. Writing can be valuable regardless of our agreement or disagreement.
John D. Rockefeller used to carry around a roll of dimes back in the day and hand them out to the peons and workers in his midst to substantiate all of his vast, enormous wealth.
Is this noblesse oblige? Money hoarding is a bad trait, no matter who does it. See today's article on Jho Low.
What is the point or theme here? ( other than the mandatory apologies to SJW?)
What will be the solution to the “bad” situation of my sons succeeding by merit enough to afford summers at the Vineyard? Redistributing it away from them? Stopping them from getting that far to start with? And how are you going to do that? Restrict their access to prestigious schools on basis of merit? But what if they succeed anyway? Socialism is always hard implement. Look around.
@Just Saying
Maybe its you who ought to look around.
Disabuse yourself that anything that smacks of economic justice (read: take enough care of your country you don't have to buy a ranch in New Zealand for when the revolution comes) is socialism. It isn't. Its common sense.
Second, Disabuse II: Socialism is not only not bad, it is universally present in every so called free-market economy. Who do you think is paying-off the welfare queens lounging on their sunny acres in Montana and Idaho? I know you think its Trump, but its me. Its socialism.
Who paid the car guys to build factories in Ohio? Factories they can walk blithely away from, as they are, because they already grabbed tens of millions in socialist bribes. Me.
You call them well-earned tax write-offs and extraordinarily creative and ethical basements in the Bahamas, but that's my money, pal. You owe me more taxes, and its only your crummy addiction to socialist economic policy that keeps you from paying up.
If you do summon the nerve to 'look around' you'll be surprised to find that even in the pinkest of socialist workers' paradises you will see rich guys ensconced in seashore communities. away from the riff-raff, with their Japanese whisky and exotic cheese.
The difference is those rich guys know they're rich. They're naive enough to think they're probably rich enough. And they know they're better off when everyone else is better off too.
They know being rich means they're rich, not worth more.
4
In a similar vein, other countries have their own self-perpetuating elites: 19 (NINETEEN) British Prime Ministers, for example, went to Eton College. Despite any protestations to the contrary, simply getting into Eton is not for the poor or faint-hearted. It also helps(enormously) to be from a wealthy background.
However, we non-Americans are told and would like to believe that things are different in the USA, and we feel comforted when a black man whose family were definitely not from a privileged background makes it to the top of that greasy pole.
This doesn't mean that we cannot appreciate how George W. Bush failed to hold back his tears when holding a eulogy for his late father: even a WASP can have a heart.
Let's be honest: most black Americans from undistinguished backgrould will continue to struggle in the lower echelons of society, and many sons (and even daughters) of well-to-do white American families will find it easier to spend their lives at the top.
3
The WASPs themselves decided to dissolve their aristocracy because in terms of the American (as opposed to the British or European experience) it made no sense. The best thing about this aristocracy was that it sometimes produced people who did not identify with it and tried to undermine it on principle.
The aristocracy we need is one of ethics or morality rather than power or money. This would be fairly new and rare in human experience, but so was this country at its founding. With a few exceptions (Switzerland or Venice) most of the nontribal world had tyrants or whatever the Ottomans had or at best limited hereditary monarchies. Our conservatives, Ross included, have to finesse or obscure the fact that this country originated in a very radical revolution against established, recognized-by-God authority, and that people who thought like they did at that time split for Canada or stayed to live under a government that was not legitimate.
America’s WASPy aristocracy is neither gone nor forgotten; it remains dominant, both socially and economically. I know that WASPs exist because, in a way, I grew up among them. I went to a very expensive private school which was 95% white, uniformly Christian, and a feeder for elite academic institutions. I myself ended up at Princeton. There, I encountered what I often referred to as “America’s undead aristocracy.” While many of Princeton’s students were admitted based upon a (somewhat) meritocratic system, there was a large segment that was there for other reasons: they were legacies, very wealthy, or they had “connections.” I spent my first two years at Princeton among the above types of people, and I learned how deeply superficial this class of people is, or at least can be. They live sheltered and privileged lives, assured that, regardless of their “merit” (or lack thereof), they will remain cocooned within the upper stratum of society. Meritocracy has not replaced aristocracy.
Douthat also misunderstands WASPs supposed “noblesse oblige.” He assumes it was authentic and universal, rather than superficial and extremely selective. Essentially, this charity was (and is) often a throwaway: a little something to feign good intentions to the public and peers, while maintaining an iron grip on the social, cultural and economic structures that oppress and subjugate the poor, minorities and other classes of people (e.g. LGBTQ individuals and women).
4
American achievement is based on the initiative of individuals and “rugged individualism” is a core value. To the extent that Douthat questions this, he is both anti democratic and anti-American. I am almost certain that he would have been a Royalist during the era of the Framers. Every time I read Douthat I realize that my views are the antipodes of his and that he spouts rhetoric from the right with only slight twists.
1
The idea that the WASP Establishment had (or has) a greater sense of public duty is simply laughable.
2
Actually, Ross. I think the "born on third base" line should be attributed to Texas ag commissioner Jim Hightower. It was spoken at the same Democratic convention.
Perhaps Ross could extend his argument to promote Enlightened Absolutism, perhaps with leaders selected via machine learning...
Yes! You kind of nailed it here. I would love to see more on this topic. Yes meritocracy and diversity are creating a structure worse than what it replaced. Yet, surely we don’t want to go back. Build on your proposed solution because I don’t know if there is one.
Now, whenever I read Douthat's column and wonder what, exactly, he thinks the word should look like, I'll remember this: "if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile." Good to know, Ross. Here's hoping you never get that magic wand.
3
Let's begin with closing down the Ivies. Thank you.
1
Do the children of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates run Apple and Microsoft?
1
Seriously? If you didn't want to be accused of racism and sexism, you shouldn't have said that*everyone* was happier in your "Good Olde Days."
2
To me, a Jew who grew up in a WASP suburb of Philadelphia during the 50’s and 60’s, the notions of “inherited responsibility and cultural stewardship” and “disciplines of duty” are empty social constructs imagined by the WASP ruling elite to perpetuate their status quo. If this column was meant to modulate any misconceptions that a previous piece had created, I’m glad I did not read the initial column. I suspect that any prior misconceptions have been confirmed. Stop explaining. And the ruling Catholic aristocracy that your magic wand would put in place? It’s already there, a fact to which countless victims will attest. Aristocracy or meritocracy, when the cards are all held by the ruling elite, the game is designed to maintain wealth and power, not share it.
6
Dear Ross:
As a beneficiary of the meritocracy, I would offer you this advice, delivered in the most patrician voice I can muster:
The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.
Your defense of your thesis, whilst honest, earnest, and forthright, sounds contrite and oozes with envy. What you might learn from WASP culture is that sometimes it’s better to simply keep one’s thoughts to one’s self.
Love,
The Meritocracy
5
If you were misread, Ross, perhaps it is because you miswrote. As for your apparent argument (I don't know--is it an argument? It's not based on any kind of data--seems more like... I don't know... a groundless assumption?), your "argument" that we have a choice between meritocracy and aristocracy:
1. The best aristocrats (redundant, I know) having a sort of "noblesse oblige". Leaving it up to the individual whether to temper great privilege with meaningful restraint and virtue is a strategy that has had a less than stellar history.
2. Perhaps the failures of meritocracy you point out are in fact the failures of capitalism or of a meritocracy in name only. More substantial inheritance taxes, equitable zoning laws and incarceration policy, and the elimination of clearly corrupt legacy university admissions and professional internships would go some way towards improving the American realization of meritocratic principles.
Tell me, Ross, when your bicycle gets a puncture, do you toss it in the trash and get out the old Penny Farthing? If you have qualms about your dentist, do you find a new one, or just root out the old chewing stick?
Lastly, do you distinguish between, on the one hand, a Socratic, gadfly-esque "provocation" and, on the other, merely annoying people with superficial contrarian ramblings and groundless armchair theorising?
2
lol ross. Take a leaf from harold bloom and learn that misreading may be the finest reading. Then learn some self examination: a roman Catholic believer in the apostolic infallibility of old men in far away italy, you in other words, is predictably likely to plump for imaginary virtues of hierarchial elitism. So let me point you to that old wasp Jefferson who asked 200 years ago: Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801.
1
Recent story re how Harvard's "case study" MBA program promoted the bottom line over human costs:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/opinion/sunday/sheryl-sandberg-facebook-russia.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Top CEOs in the scandal, Wall St recession, Cheryl Sandburg all trained there. Bible of the 1%:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/sheryl-sandberg-harvard-business-school-leadership
Student once asked a Prof. (I'm not making this up):
"What would you do if you had definite proof that a product your co. makes kills children, parents, and seniors?"
A: "I'd continue to make it. Nothing is more important than shareholder return."
Until Harvard MBA program disbanded, nothing will change.
3
Spot on, Ross. WASP values were Yankee values and included an idea of social equality and justice that are forgotten or ignored.
Teddy Roosevelt was a paragon of WASP values; in opposition to the ruthless capitalism of JP Morgan and John D Rockefeller, much like Bush vs Trump today.
This was a very different type of elitism than that which grew in the plantation south or in colonial Virginia which emphasized racial differences. Today's leftists are obsessed with the legacy of the latter and can't seem to appreciate the virtues of the former.
1
I think that you are winning this argument except for the Catholic super-state part. :)
2
The case for meritocracy is the Trump administration. Never before have we had such a collection of inept, corrupt and mendacious Know Nothings in the White House and the Cabinet. A true meritocracy would never have allowed it.
1
Oh what a tangled web you weave. It won't hold together when you trip over your own shoelaces.
3
“ speak, that I may see thee “ - Ben Jonson
We see you, Sir. All too well.
4
This column reminded me of a book I read in a Sociology class some 50 years ago. The book is “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” by Max Weber. Admittedly I had to do a quick Wikipedia review to refresh my memory, but it was an interesting recollection that proved surprisingly relevant to the current discussion and particularly to Douthat’s conjuring a “Catholic aristocracy” rather than a Protestant one. It seems modern Protestantism might be the root of all evil after all. Weber argued (taken from Wikipedia) that “according to the new Protestant religions, an individual was religiously compelled to follow a secular vocation with as much zeal as possible. A person living according to this world view was more likely to accumulate money.” He also noted that “giving money to the poor or to charity was generally frowned on as it was seen as furthering beggary. This social condition was perceived as laziness, burdening their fellow man, and an affront to God; by not working, one failed to glorify God.” Having evolved from such foundational ideas, we now have a modern Republican party run by god-fearing atheists who worship their own hyper productivity and unfettered wealth and are religiously obligated not to share too much lest it create a slovenly underclass that will suck all the wealth from the more deserving. The fact is the words wealth and worthy are not related and the idea of a benevolent aristocracy is an oxymoron.
5
Huh? Meritocracy? More like idiocracy.
1
"...if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile"
Indeed, let's put the Catholic Church back in charge. History has already showed us how well that worked out. Bring back The Inquisition! Ross, are you really that reactionary? From this moment forward, I will read your columns under a very different light...
4
This guy supports a Catholic aristocracy which will enforce benign, benevolent rule over lesser creatures of other or lesser faith.
3
Mr. Douthat: you write you want "...a Catholic aristocracy"???
Can you not note how that has worked out for many thousands of kids all over the world?
7
Since Ross Douthat is so nostalgic for the old elites like George H.W. Bush (son of a senator, grandson of a banker) let's take a short walk down memory lane to remember exactly how George H.W. Bush treated his fellow Americans.
On 29 October 1992, at Macomb Community College, Warren, Michigan, he spoke concerning Governor William Clinton of Arkansas and Senator Al Gore of Tennessee:
"My dog Millie knows more about foreign affairs than these two bozos. It's crazy. ... And look, if you listen to Governor Clinton and Ozone Man, if you listen to them. You know why I call him Ozone Man? This guy is so far off in the environmental extreme, we'll be up to our neck in owls and out of work for every American. This guy's crazy! He's way out, far out, man!"
https://www.c-span.org/video/?33818-1/bush-campaign-speech
If Mr. Douthat wants to know the source of the current incivility in political discourse, he need only look back to this speech from a bona fide member of the elite.
Now, what was his case against the meritocracy again?
4
WASP= white anglo-saxon protestant, period
You don't get to decide that the terms only includes polite do-gooder WASPS, while excluding the many mean nasty WASPS.
Nor does broadening the term to include polite kind black, Catholic, immigrant etc. people. If non-WASP's like Obama have good character you are not doing them an honor if you "promote them" to WASPdom. They don't need or desire your benediction, Mr. WASP. They can just be good people all on their own, thank you, just like they have always been.
2
"The meritocracy" to which Ross refers is not meritocratic. I think Ross's point is that its meritocratic values are largely bounded within itself, mostly closing out or limiting opportunity for those born outside of its boundaries.
Thus, the near-desperation of upper middle-class parents to ensure their children obtain a threshold of privilege, allowing them to participate meaningfully. No sensible person really believes that layering onto young children an intense and broad schedule of extracurricular activities ranging from sports, to travel, to charitable work twelve months a year builds better citizens. It's about flexing muscle to leg into an elite school and gain the favor of elites.
1
Please register by extreme objection to the continuing use of the word “elite” as it has been used this past decade. Conservatives come up with clever ad hominem arguments that completely distort reality. There are too many to list— “globalist” and “populist” are a few of the newer ones. Such labels are similar to the word “crybaby” or “whiner,” or even “unpatriotic.”
Such terms are used to silence any suggestions that what we have now can be improved. You can hear the working class looking with disdain on “elites,” who they think are upper class snobs. This column is a great example of this.
I’m not stupid, but I frequently have to pause in disbelief that a spoiled brat, millionaire with gold bathroom fixtures is taking on elites, and is part of a movement that is labeled “populist.”
How in the world do you come up with this notion that only elites are interested in diversity and fairness? You don’t! You work backwards by subtly giving the stink eye to anybody who disagrees with you without discussing issues. Call them “elite.”
The use of such ad hominem tools for persuasion is a marvelous method of winning support by deception, but it should be beneath serious media outlets. Let’s not talk about “aristocracy,” “meritocracy” or “”elites.” Let’s talk about issues and policies.
2
May I add: social envy is powerful and promise of equality sells well. Ask Lenin or Mussolini, Mao or Hitler.
Mr Duhat implies that there are no intellectual differences, just privilege, that there is no merit, just social bias.
I'm short, because I wasn't properly fed. All children are above average, aren't they?
The Roosevelts WASPS? Not if the middle letters stand for Anglo-Saxon. Rudyard Kipling recalled meeting Theodore Roosevelt in 1895, when he was Under-Secretary of the Navy: “He would come to our hotel and thank God in a loud voice that he had not one drop of British blood in him; his ancestry being Dutch, …” (‘Something of Myself’, Ch. 5.)
2
GOOFY article Ross! What EXACTLY do you propose to supplant "meritocracy"? Work hard; you get. Don't work hard; you don't. WHAT's so hard to understand here?
1
@Bob
I agree that Mr. Douthat’s column is a bit facile. But his point about meritocracy is that it really isn’t. There are ditch diggers, fourth grade teachers, public health doctors, charity workers, and food truck vendors who work far harder than the current President and many of the people surrounding him ever have. And with few exceptions, the smart among the poor will never be positioned to take advantage of your meritocracy. It looks like thermodynamics - you can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t get out of the game.
2
Bush was a good decent person, but he seemed to be controlled by Dick Chaney and Karl Rove,w ho were neither.
3
“‘WASP,’ ‘aristocracy,’ ‘meritocracy’... when I use a word,” Ross Douthat thought in rather a scornful tone, not unlike Humpty Dumpty, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
Two pieces with the same tortured argument; both drivel.
4
Yeah, Trump and his administration exemplifie meritocracy...
1
“meritocracy’s ruthless solipsism”? Really? What are you talking about? Meritocracy is no more prone to solipsism than aristocracy. And as a life long Catholic, my suggestion is to run, screaming, from your Catholic aristocracy. Have you no knowledge of history at all? Ruling Catholic aristocracy has been tried many times before, and it turned out to be as spiritually bereft and corrupt and “solipsistic” as anything today. Sheesh, Ross.
6
Douthat is accused of defending the white overlords and (as usual) uses sophisticated vocabulary and arcane terms to defend himself---perhaps protesting just a wee bit too much. Hmmmmm.
1
Any nostalgia for the past WASP elite has to be tempered by remembering the cruelty of their Puritan sexual repression, going back to the days of Hester Prynne. I was a part of that elite, coming from families that had been in Boston since the seventeenth century, then going to Exeter and Harvard. The only problem was that I was a homosexual and therefore a disgrace to the family. I was driven insane by a psychiatrist who tried to cure my homosexuality. I had to leave America to try to forget the horrors that I had known there. You can read my story in my book What Rough Beast.
2
The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging, friend.
So you would prefer to have a Catholic aristocracy that I assume would want to codify Catholic scripture into law. Sounds like a Shariah country to me.
7
"... the typical meritocrat is born on third base."
Really?
That must be news to Barack Obama and, oh, a few million others.
4
@Ambient Kestrel
But of course it is not news to the vast majority of non-elites who were born behind the bleachers, the exceptional case of Barack Obama notwithstanding.
Ross, we like you... really. Take it from a friend. Please stop digging the hole you placed yourself in last week deeper. We forgive you, so let's move on.
2
The "WASPy" Barack Obama studied political science at Occidental and Columbia, fought a few years in the trenches of community organizing, went on to Harvard Law School where he was elected president of the Law Review, received a degree which I believe specialized in Constitutional law, taught law, then ran for political office.
That's what I want in a president--someone who understands this country, studied this country, and went to work for this country.
That's what I want, and I don't care what that individual looks like or what church they go to. Heck, they don't even have to belong to a church--that would earn my very enthusiastic vote.
We run a very complicated and powerful government here--lots of agencies doing important work. If we get another know-nothing self-aggrandizing moron who thinks they can run a country like this one because they appeared to have made a lot of money through shady practices that skirted our ethics and norms at every turn, then we don't deserve to succeed as a nation.
We've become a joke nation when a reality TV star gets elected president and the majority of his supporters lap up his 128 character lies like gospel truth.
Your preference for a "multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy" tellingly omits the things important to me--education, commitment to all Americans (not just Catholic ones) and dedication to public service.
4
The only merit Americans worship is $$$. Certainly not accomplishments or what people think. Most rich WASP's do nothing but hire people to make them look good. Americans are idiots who worship the rich guy who hired the smart woman that actually accomplished something.
America is a mediocre billionaire gambling paradise.
2
Those who damn the aristocracy that founded our nation and nursed it through its early history need to think a little about one salient fact.
The inexorable opening of American social, political and economic classes since 1800 culminating in our current, mostly meritocratic society today would not be possible without the earliest efforts by imperfect white men.
Just look around the world today.
Nowhere today is there a population nearly as large as our that is nearly as diverse. Nowhere.
Meritocracy has been built on the shoulders of the generations that preceded ours. Like them, we are manifestly imperfect.
Those who damn the past because the imperfect people who created our country do not measure up to modern definitions of meritocracy, or diversity, or whatever, simply do not understand how civilizations are constructed and sustained over centuries.
2
"(the rich kid with a Wharton degree posturing as a self-made man)".
One more time! The current occupant of 1600 does NOT have an MBA from Wharton Business School. He has a plain undergraduate B.S. from Wharton College. Of course, he is wont to allow confusion on this part of his CV. His academic progress at Fordham was such that he was going to be asked to leave after his sophomore year. Bingo, get Dad to grease the wheels at Penn.
I am sure all the MBA holders from Wharton cringe at this supposed connection.
4
The simple solution, stop making donations to the Ivy's and give to your local public university instead.
2
While you're fondly remembering and praising the virtues of an"aristocracy" that no longer exists why not wax poetic about wise and just kings and benevolent dictators of yore?
4
Love it, Ross! "...if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile. (Hey, you asked.)" ....Well, I would have asked!
But given Ross is on a distant planet in another galaxy, writing these insights, how about we just go for any good and caring person who wants to serve this nation and cares about its peoples....all of them.
Why, I'd vote for even a Meritocratic good person. Or even one like George H. W. Bush.
As my retreat master once said in such situations, "Pray harder," and, I'd only add, "Search harder." Amen......
1
"And I would separate them. I think it was a good and necessary thing that the American upper class diversified, and that more African-Americans and Jews and Catholics (like myself) and women now share privileges and powers once reserved for Protestant white men."
I like how you slid yourself on in there, Ross. As if there were somewhere you could go in this country and still experience discrimination that would affect your ability to earn a living or feel safe.
5
We could spin the same argument for a benevolent dictator! (Hey, you asked.) Fairness, equality and justice are "hard work", never-to-be-fully-met and grossly imperfect endeavors, but oh so Godliness/like necessary.
2
Meritocracy as practiced in our country is often a ruse for white supremacy, it's the good old boy network whether it's promoted by northeastern WASPs, southern Protestants or Hollywood or corporate media agnostic liberals, all examples of meritocacry that in practice is a kind of group or "family" nepotism.
Some opportunists find themselves in the right place at the right time with meritorious partners and create success with their ideas and parters and break through the phony meritocracy and create wealth, Jobs and Wozniak and Gates and Allen spring to mind at Apple and Microsoft.
A couple stark facts prove our meritocracy is "bigly" a ruse, the USA is by far the most violent developed nation in the world with Americans having shot far more of their fellow Americans just since 1970 than killed in all our historical wars combined. It also and has been for a long time, the world's greatest jailer and criminalizer of its own citizens, more so than our two historical bogeyman Russia and China.
These facts point out that the meritocracy is really more of an undocumented tyranny that hides in the shadows, as our corporate media and Hollywood perpetuate the myth of WASP meritocracy rather than expose the thorny problems that beset our larger diverse society.
America should be leading a domestic and global movement of cross cultural cooperation, the equitable distribution of education, jobs and wealth and disarmament. We'll then be a meritorious example for all.
3
It's about self-reflection and empathy, isn't it? If you understand that you are fallible, that you stand on the shoulders of others who came before you--whether patrician parents or penniless immigrants--
1
Douthat is vacillates between espousing meritocracy and burying it. On one hand, he states that, the artistocrats "transform[ed] their once-Protestant universities into a secular mass-opportunity system — a more democratic way of education, in which anyone with enough talent could climb the ladder ..." But then he pillories merit - though using the recently deceased President Bush seems in poor taste.
Such contortions are nothing new. Former Harvard President Lawrence Lowell famously lamented that the influx of high-scoring Jews would "ruin the college". Instead, he wanted to " impose a higher standard for admission to the freshman class on members of the 'Hebrew race' " This sounds suspiciously like Harvard's current defense of "affirmative action" which imposes higher admission standards on Asians. Is such identitarian politics really preferable to meritocracy ?
The point that Douthat (and many liberals) miss is that the key to making meritocracy more democratic is better disseminating the common sense foundations for self-improvement. Bob Balfanz of Johns Hopkins identified 1700 high schools (1 in 10) where fewer than 60% of students graduate on time. Yet, for some reason, these "failure factories" still exist ? More than 40% of poor children are raised in single-parent families - despite reams of evidence of the harm this causes. We need to return to the basics of education and family in order to succeed - both as individuals and as a country.
3
@Alan Backman
“Yet, for some reason, these failure factories still exist...”
If we take your premise as gospel, then the focus of a curious and introspective mind should be on the “some reason” in your statement. But that is, of course, a point that most conservatives avoid, usually by blaming the children of the poor for their poverty. As you have done here.
"This argument was read by certain readers... as a paean to white privilege, even a brief for white supremacy. In these misreadings, there was an assumption that to praise, in any way, the elite that predated the modern meritocracy is to reject racial diversity, minority and female advancement, in favor of permanent white rule.
That’s not my view. "
If it is not your view sir, then you should spend less time being provocative and more time being illuminitive because you swung and missed a second time here by trying to parse the differences witihn the WASP class.
This column reads like a promotion for repealing the estate tax.
There was a reason these people were called "robber barons" and it wasn't because of their noblesse oblige.
5
Wow. lots of undefined words here and of course as about 100 of these comments mention, the word meritocracy falls apart fast in regard to definition. Who decides the merit; who decides the best and the brightest? Can't be done.
Elite is a vulgar word implying arrogance, privilege and greed for power. The monied always buy power and privilege. You call them the aristocracy.
“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” Confucius
2
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, WASPs not being immune from this dictum. Some were good and some were bad. I'd apply the same warning to non-WASPs as well.
1
"Modern meritocracy"?!
In the person of who and whom, exactly? The soulless defaulting partners of Goldman Sachs? Mitch McConnell? NYT op-ed columnists? The Trump Organization?
Like so many right-wing adherents, Douthat confuses success with merit.
This coy narcissism is fairly shocking.
5
Ross, you dream of a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy? It's called the Supreme Court.
6
"WASPy Barach Obama"? Why? Because he was eloquent, refined, sociable, gentle-humored, and well-mannered?
As if those traits are not to be encountered anywhere outside patrician New England or in other parts of the country or in other parts of the world.?
2
This bizarre panegyric to inequality shows how democracy has come to be regarded as a threat--in the era of social media--by the American ruling elite and its media servants. Forget Karl Marx--this column would make Thomas Jefferson amazed and angry at such immoral acceptance of aristocracy. . . . The old WASP elite was just as greedy, corrupt and bellicose as the current crew. They just did a better job of covering it up.
3
You want the elite to "be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile. (Hey, you asked.)"
NO, I did NOT ask.
3
@RossDouthat says “if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile. (Hey, you asked.)”
Why “catholic” & not multi-religious?
3
How does social responsibility become one of the elements of merit? It must be taught, in classroom, in church, at the dinner table. It becomes an article of faith in itself. Jews call it Tikkun Olam, repair of the world; yet in the public sphere (unfortunately driven by the press) good works are often derided, their practitioners suspect, their achievements abrogated. A start could be requiring leaders—aristocratic, meritocratic, or democratic—to somehow recognize that their success is nothing without a vibrant society to be successful in.
Reminds me of the House of Lords in the British parlimentary system.
1
Digging the hole deeper. A convoluted rationalization of a bad idea make the author look articulate but with little or no capacity for self-examination.
1
"This week I briefly trended on Twitter — a bracing experience for any columnist, because it means that you’ve done your job of provocation a little bit too well."
I am glad you explained your job is provocation, not analysis.
2
Any writing requiring an eighth-grade reading level is guaranteed to confuse and probably enrage the everyday progressive hate-trainee moving his lips as he stares at his tiny screen.
At one time you spoke over the head of the simple-minded socialist excited about global warming or indicting Trump by spelling words out.
Now all you have to do is put your thoughts in a book. They'll never see them.
This column lost me when it claimed that African Americans could be WASPs. The "WAS" part of the acronym disqualifies them, if not the "W" alone. And African Americans aside from Rice, Powell, and Obama have not had the power to shape foreign policy.
1
Ross is living on a false dichotomy here.
It's true that picking our leaders solely on who got into Harvard and Yale and maybe Princeton when they were 18 is a bad idea. People accomplish or fail to accomplish a great deal after college, and I'd rather have a leader who worked their way through community college and went on to do amazing things than I would someone who got their Harvard degree and spent the rest of their lives as a no-name management consultant.
The problem is that the only alternative Ross describes to "meritocracy" is aristocracy, where power is granted not to the kids that got into the top colleges, but to the kids of the rich and powerful. And that's shown to be a terrible idea the day that an idiot son of a rich person is put in charge of something they have no capacity to handle.
But I guess this country would have been better off without the decidedly non-aristocratic Dwight Eisenhower or Abraham Lincoln, right?
3
Coming from a first generation immigrant family (neither white nor protestant), I agree with Ross' premise that a sense of duty to your community should be lauded and encouraged. As he noted, a certain type of WASP demonstrated this. It's partly why that generation was the greatest generation.
I went to a public high school, and when my parents moved they sent my brother and sister to Phillips Andover. In my public school and at Andover, I saw kids that had much merit and would later do financially well for themselves. Many needed to, they did not come from money. They benefitted from the academic community being open to merit. Some just keep working hard to make sure they and their kids are assured to continue to be part of the elite, but the ones I respect the most do something, like "41", for their community. We need all levels of society to do well. Any society will have an elite. No matter how you get to be one, noblesse oblige is a good motivation for an elite to have.
There are great points in both of these columns...but they miss the mark on some points, in a surprising way specifically for Douthat.
What's the surprise? The assumption that adopting a morality with any sense of noblesse oblige isn't really possible for the meritocrats. This is based on ...what, exactly?
Correlation isn't causation. The most interesting leaders I know, much more merit than auto, are those who have come to act on a belief. That the tide isn't really rising if only a few of the boats are rising quite high. And the knowledge that failing to act on that belief is the fertilizer on which revolutions are built.
Why surprising for Douthat? Because - this is part of the non-religious dogma of the Catholic (and many other) church most of us were raised with, elite and less so. The same message went out to all of us, that excessive pursuit of temporal riches could in fact be disqualifying in the hereafter, whatever flavor you prefer. Most of us actually got the hint, or America wouldn't be possible in the first place.
1
EDITOR: PLEASE USE THIS VERSION, PREVIOUS ONE HAS BAD TYPO. THANK YOU.
Mr. Douthat reveals himself to be one more embarrassed conservative in search of a so last century narrative to explain the current political circumstance in which the Republican Party has devolved into grifters, charlatans, felons and traitors. His sentimental longing for the rich good guys leads me to believe he needs to spend some time chopping wood and carrying water.
The contrast to Mr. Kristol's column on American tax dollars manipulated by dishonest elites to starve children is nothing less than shattering. Mr. Douthat needs to leave his desk to go intern to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez for some months to learn what a young Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin would be today.
Our 240-year old Constitution, although patched in a few places, is wholly inadequate. The economic and political structure of our governance has become a pinball machine in an arcade of digitized Wall Street banks. Yet the still noble and meaningful goals of the Framers were an educated populace who took responsibility for governance and lived freely and happily with an absence of aristocracy.
The experiment in American Democracy is "We the People." Finally, we have the technological ability to enact that experiment in a way that would have excited the innovative thinking of Jefferson and Franklin. And as a blessing, our American DNA has produced not another elite, but a new, courageous, Founding Visionary out of the Bronx.
5
So Douthat wants a return to the dark ages when a Catholic Aristocracy ruled the Western World, conducted an Inquisition, and waged holy war against Muslims in Palestine. Much better.
4
Sometimes when you try to back pedal, your tires just sink deeper into the mud. By reminding us that he is Catholic (twice), is Mr. Douthat suggesting that his fondness for the old WASP order, when the elite "knew who and what they were" should not be considered prejudism? The people he has chosen to malign as part of the rising meritocracy include Barack Obama. He had the audacity to vacation on the WASPy Martha's Vineyard. Douthat also singles out two high-ranking female executives for their foibles and ruthless "solopsism"...that's extreme egotism....as examples of why meritocracy doesn't work. Really??
2
America's WASPs have failed in ethics. They had manners and talent but lacked morals and ethics. Today's example is Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg neither of which have any ethics or moral leanings. It's only about the money. The Catholic Church is a failed institution with no ethics or morals and it continues to hide sexual abuse and repeat it over and over again behind the scenes whether multiracial or not.
4
"I don’t want to bring back the WASPs; if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile. (Hey, you asked.)"
Well, I don't want to live in your theocracy; if I had a magic wand I'd create two new healthy planets, one run by and for religious believers (Planet God) and one run by and for atheists (Planet Godless).
You guys (sic) can fight it out to see whose superstitions reign supreme. Me, I'd be throwing my lot in with the heathens.
4
I don't get it when Ross goes full WASP ruling was great. Under WASPS an entire ethnic group was slaves for 100s of years. Under WASPS we interned Japanese Americans.
A lot of bad stuff happened under WASPS. They were really really bad. Just like every other group.
3
"Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world".
Only then, as John Lennon implored, will this all become a bad memory. It is man that will destroy all that sustains us. Then proceed to blame the other guy. As sad as it must be, I am betting on Darwin.
4
"WASPy Barack Obama liked to hang out in the summer, sits on the shores of the WASP isle of Martha’s Vineyard."
As a born and bred New Englander, and visitor to Nantucket and the Vineyard, I can guarantee you Ross there's not many WASP's, but there's a God awful bunch of ticks! And most who visit are Democrats, Republicans go to Maine.
I know this nothing to do with meritocracy but so what!
3
Learn about the history of Martha’s Vineyard before you label it a “WASP enclave”. Fact check!
4
"[I]f I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile. (Hey, you asked.)"
Good idea, Ross. I can think of nothing more likely to engender revolution than revitalizing the dying autocracy of your misogynistic, theopathic religion, the scourge throughout the ages of everyone but the aristocracy.
2
We didn't misunderstand, Ross.
You're just wrong.
6
In "The Case Against Meritocracy", a followup to his previous Op-Ed, "Why We Miss the WASPs", Ross Douthat continues to make the case for a ruling class, sans irony.
The adage, "When you're in a hole, stop digging.", comes to mind.
3
First of all, what meritocracy? I don't see any meritocracy.
Second, you really don't understand the point of secularism do you. What do you think those of us who don't share your religion would make of your Catholic elite?
Thirdly, we didn't ask.
3
Sorry, can't agree with the article. Sure, meritocracy tends to "self-segregate", like WASPs. But there's no way the self-segregation is as powerful. The list of failed meritocrat offspring, in Western society particularly, is quite long. And there's one crucial difference ... entry into the meritocrats is open to anyone who has merit -- Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the Google guys come to mind. And consider how the "new" migrants from Asia are making waves!
2
Michelle Obama's autobiography, "Becoming" is stunning in that she was encouraged to raise above the southside of Chicago. She was raised by two lower middle-class parents that bestowed and sacrificed for their two children. Both Michelle and her brother were accepted into Princeton. Michelle went on to Harvard for her law degree. This in itself is amazing, but then we have the story of Barak Obama, this man had a far harder ride. He was born to a white mother and a black man. This was more likely a young marriage of lust rather than anything else. Obama's mother than married and Indonesian man and had another daughter. Barak was sent to live with his maternal grandparents in Hawaii. He became great by greatness that was within him and he was able to arise above the system and reap the awards of his effort. How were they fortunate enough to gain meritocracy?
The saddest part of this story is trump. This man was born on third base and graduated from Wharton probably because of an endowment from his father. This totally amoral and unethical individual demeans Obama relentlessly. Destroys every single achievement of this Obama. In reality,l trump couldn't shine Obama's shoes.
1
I can’t help but think of two African American women, michelle Obama and toni Morrison . They are queens. They write and speak and act with total honesty and accuracy and fierce devotion to their upbringing and history as African Americans in a racist country. They do not speak in ways designed to convince white people of their worth, they speak the truth about who they are, where they came from and in doing so they place themselves at the very top of any meritocratic system. They become aristocratic in the very best sense. I would follow them anywhere.
2
Trump is crazy, criminal, corrupt, dumb, ignorant, racist, misogynist and thoroughly incompetent. Obama handed him a great economy and stock market, and tried to contain the deficit. Trump and his party have turned it all into a complete mess. The debate is now about whether the US will escape a global slowdown and recession. Trump’s administration has been in utter chaos for two years now. It was clear that many in his staff were heading for the exit after the mid term. If it were not for gerrymandering, voter supression and fraud by the republicans they would have lost more senate and many more house seats in the mid term election.
1
You are spot on. The "antiquated" concepts of self sacrifice, delayed gratification, honor, duty, and those types of qualities are lost on a generation who sees that all you have to do to be the richest person in the world is create and app, write a song, or be the greatest athlete. Not that those things don't require work, but your return on investment is generally close to zero, as the vast majority will never make much money in these fields.
The Carnegies and Rockefellers were philanthropists who knew to reinvest in their community. They had to be stopped so that the government can provide this kind of largesse. But the government eventually runs out of other people's money and has to keep raising taxes...(see Paris now)
Equality is an illusion. None of us are equal. We have equal rights, but we are not at all equal.
Mankind will never transcend the laws of the universe. Or the laws of nature. Do you think that a pride of lions are concerned about treating the beta males with respect and kindness? No, they either have to take over from the alpha or go away.
Problem is "merit" is often seen as how n much money you are worth. If a person was smarter, kinder, better prepared, accomplished more, was trustworthy and responsible, then these are good definitions. If the definition he/she is worth millions then not so good. Many of our so call merit aristocrats have only the money as their claim to worthiness.
1
Thanks for being clear, Ross, about your ultimate goal: rule by Catholic church.
4
How strange! Fareed Zakaria wrote essentially the same thing in his article. Did you two work together on this? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/im-not-calling-to-revive-wasp-culture-just-to-learn-from-it/2018/12/06/a19d5eea-f99d-11e8-863c-9e2f864d47e7_story.html?utm_term=.8c44a876173c
2
The WASP aristocracy Douthat describes and praises had to fail because it treated all non-WASPS as people who smelled bad. They used money and power as if they were soap. Once the movies and radio and mass literacy and education revealed not only how they lived but also their strange olfactory delusions, their period of power was gone. It also may have helped that capitalism lowered the price of soap.
Ed Codish
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I think that an elite founded on racial purity (WHITE Anglo saxon Protestants), religious exclusivism (Protestants) , language dominance (Anglo) is simply not sustainable. The loyalty to institutions such as the legal institutions will be there in a meritocracy. The elites of the Northeast were racist and sexist and antisemitic and STILL ARE! (See Kavanaugh, Clubs where Jews not accepted, Republican Party.......) Disgusting and out of step with modern USA. These elites are dying and may there death be swift
4
I'm sure Ross was just being provocative when he wrote that he aspires to a Catholic Aristocracy. Why should it be Catholic?
1
"... if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile. (Hey, you asked.)" In reality, I do not think anyone asked, but hey, why not celebrate the Crusades, the Inquisition, and 1,500 years of unrestrained murder, rape, theft (What? You thought all the stuff held by the Vatican were donations? LOL), and cultural destruction in Asia, Africa, and the Americas - all in the name of a little Jewish magician who allegedly lived about 2,000 years ago.
2
Mr. Douthat seems to think that modern America truly has a meritocracy. If that was the case, then we would have a lot more minorities and women in public service, particularly in the House of Representatives. But, we have gerrymandered House districts that cater to racism and fear and bring us Republican idiocy.
2
The “W” in WASP refers to white people only. Your argument already falls flat with that exclusionary premise.
Throwing Obama’s name out there as a token for diversity sake is laughable.
3
Maybe Mr. Douthat should have quit after the last column. He's not doing his argument any favors with this latest attempt.
I am reminded of an old rhyme that my mother used to say...
“Boston, Boston...The home of the bean & the cod
Where Cabots speak only to Lodges & Lodges speak only to God”!
She would also tap her head with her index finger & say...”WASPs...too much intermarriage”! But oh the great invention of the “gentleman’s C”!
1
Just a small note on meritocracy in the university. True certain members of the lower orders, who show prodigious merit by achievement above and beyond the ordinary are co-opted into the meritocracy. At the same time most universities are effectively closed to most people outside of the top 20% because tuition and fees are simply prohibitive. Meanwhile anybody in the top 20% who can't make it at University has serious problems.
1
There is one trait that I miss seeing among the new moneyed and that is philanthropy. They do not understand what it is or get it at all that they must give some back. This is something WASPs understood very well and instilled in their offspring. Philanthropy was an unspoken expectation of their breed or upbringing. Today most of the nouveau riche families are clueless in these matters. It is an important trait that must be cultivated or their wealth will be even more despised.
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Why should I value the musings of someone whose admitted goal is a Catholic aristocracy from Quebec to Chile? I notice the number of fundamentalist Opus Dei type Catholics are now on the Supreme Court, so you’re making progress. We are a secular country and I for one don’t want the Opus Dei version of Sharia law here. Your goal for the future of our hemisphere is the important part of this piece, not whether you label Ivy League kids, the majority of whom are getting in on legacy over merit anyway, meritocrats or aristocrats.
8
Thanks Ross for a perfect description of the neocons who gave us the Iraq War (and its endless aftermath): "a way of arrogant intelligence unmoored from historical experience, ambition untempered by self-sacrifice."
2
If we had Ross's catholic aristocracy, they would seal and hasten the doom of our human civilization and species.
Diverted to praying to pre-Dark-Ages mythical super-beings in the sky. Diverted from reality. Uncomprehending of what we are doing to set into motion self-driving processes of climate change that will eRATicate conditions of human life on Earth.
And to speed us toward our doom, they would force unwanted births, accelerating our over-population growth that underlies and drives all we are doing to eRATicate conditions of human life on Earth.
Hard to believe that 400 years after Galileo, masses of people thus deluded still exist.
Committing our species' greatest sin. Erasing our species and most others with us.
The only serious question we would face is: What should we leave behind?
4
We have mediotocracy run by the crude entiled rich kids. They just lack the class of the earlier entitled generations. Meritocracy means you have truly earned your place. No one in today's governement has done that.My Dad did. he rose from modest parents, renters, who only bought their first property after they had sent him to law school and retired. Trump wouldn't know what true work ever was. Everything is a game to this low class entitled brat.
2
Douthat, whose work I often admire, trades heavily in this piece on seat-of-the-pants sociology /history. What evidence (beyond mentioning a few names) justifies his broad conclusions? I see next to none.
3
Who of us non-elite would know that among them, there are insiders
and outsiders? And that insiders keep the outsiders informed through
coded messages in the public press? That wouldn't have occurred to me
until I read about this practice in the autobiography of Norbert
Wiener ("Ex-Prodigy," p. 219). He used as an example how Bertrand
Russell, the outcast pacifist aristocrat, knew that a specific
British ship had been torpedoed by the Germans even though the
disaster was a military secret, simply from the way a picture of
an anonymous ship was placed and captioned on the front page of
a newspaper. Knowing this, will you ever read this newspaper the
same way again?
You lost me in that paragraph where you gave as an example of "meritocratic self-deception" Donald Trump. Donald Trump and meritocratic don't belong in the same sentence.
4
How nostalgic... Czarist Russia, when serfs in rags trudging through cold and snowy streets could look into mansions with glittering chandeliers, warm and bright!, and take comfort in this knowledge -- Although I may freeze starving in the gutter under this sociopolitical system, at least SOMEONE is doing well out of it.
But, Mr Douthat argues, noblesse oblige. In Czarist Russia the oppressors were aristocrats! They were gracious in their charity! Or, with Talleyrand -- Those who were not alive before 1789 do not know how beautiful life can be.
Dansons la capucine / y'a pas de pain chez nous / y en a chez la voisine / mais ce n'est pas pour nous. -- French children still sing that, still sing of Madame la Voisine, Madame Veto; of Marie Antoinette, whose bread was not for them. Who despite nobility felt no obligation.
Aristocrats, Mr Douthat? Only as ornaments for street-lanterns, thank you. -- Vive le son / du canon.
4
Well, I’m afraid you haven’t helped your case much against the Twitter backlash.
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"The WASPs were distinct from other white elites — including the planter class that ruled the South, the regional elites that emerged as the frontier moved westward, the immigrant tycoons who challenged WASP power in the East. Their importance rested, to borrow from a WASP acquaintance’s email this week, on being “primus inter pares” — first among equals, with a particular kind of power in a particular set of institutions, and an ability to set a tone for the American upper class that was adopted by other groups when they ascended."
I see you've read Colin Woodard's "American Nations" and the points he made about The Puritans - (WASPS) -AND how that educational legacy survives to this day in the North East.
It's also worth remembering how he depicted the South and the planter class as the most selfish and barbaric and how THAT legacy continues to this day.
Still ground zero for all things racist and regressive and awful in America!
1
Ross is just upset that the aristocracy of America (formerly all WASPs) has been supplanted by the meritocracy of America (a diverse group of not necessarily WASPs).
His pseudo intellectual justification for why this has been harmful to America is inadequate. The truth is that non-WASP meritocratic "aristocrats of today" behave as arrogantly and greedily as WASP aristocrats.
What does this mean? That WASP values still prevail in America.
3
So, Ross, would it be better to have leadership by the mediocre?
1
I found this piece to be mildly interesting until you coughed up your ideal of a “multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile”. Are you serious? Why stop there?Why not let the Vatican rule the entire globe providing the convenient remedy for every atrocity committed to be immediately forgiven without recourse?
8
Ross, here is a suggestion.When you are in a hole, stop digging. Unless I am dealing with early onset dementia, I do not remember Noblesse Oblige being used in the same sentence with the name Lee Atwater. The racist demagoguery promoted by this dirty trickster operative was encouraged by GHWB as a necessary condition of winning his election to the presidency. I also do not recall the concept of 'noble obligations' being used in the same sentence with the term 3/5 compromise...the 'great' compromise at is called that enshrined human slavery in the US Constitution. Nor do I recall it being used to define the 100 years of cruelty that prevented the full restoration of civility to all southerners, black and white, in the South following the civil war.
Give it up already.
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“ if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile. (Hey, you asked.)”
Not we didn’t. And God protect us from reformed drunks and religious converts.
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Good article amenable to “fleshing out.” The Irish Catholic “struggle” with WASP exclusion always took two approaches: The Bathouse John Coughlin and Michel J Curley way in Chicago and Boston taunted the reformists Lambert Tree and Leverette Salstontall. But there was a second approach: The “lace curtain” crowd attended Harvard and Holy Cross with the Kennedy’s and the Caseys. Overall the “Ivied” Irish, the so called “imitators” (Douthat’s term) among the immigrant Catholics, actually absorbed notions of public service and good government from WASP forebears in pursuing their ambitions. Nothing wrong with that type of acculturation! Bathouse John’s raw exploitations may have had some comic aspects (he looted Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo of animals).
Meritocracy’s best virtue, despite its glaring deficiencies regarding public service, may be lessons regarding the fruits of hard academic work, especially in an age of kids with noses stuck to screens instead of “noses in books.” While academic and intellectual egalitarianism may subtly erect insuperable exclusionary barriers, wisdom prescribes humane social safety nets and true ease of access based on merit instead of mere legacy. Meritocracy ‘s failure to pursue wider purposes, even if unacknowledged by conservatives, could lead to trouble.
Your sentences are sometimes very complex, and convoluted, Ross. So it's hard to understand often just what you are saying. Plainly stating where you are on an issue at the outset, and then getting complex if you must, might be the way to go. At least we'd have a guide as to where you are coming from.
Before opining that President Obama is mimicking WASPiness by traveling to Martha’s Vineyard, Ross could have spent a moment to research and discovered the long history of African-Americans who have built a vacation community there, particularly in Oak Bluffs. In fact, he might have learned some suggestion of this history by reading this NYT article last year, “Martha’s Vineyard Has a Nourishing Magic for Black Americans.” The photo of Oak Bluffs that the NYT choose to pair with Ross’ article is also a bit unfortunate, since it seems selected to demonstrate the “WASPiness” of Oak Bluffs, again seemingly unaware of the more complicated history.
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Sing it, Nathan Grossman !
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/dining/marthas-vineyard-african-american-community.html
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I believe he did discover that; indeed, he refers to “the oldest summer colony for black Americans.”
Now that you've put everyone in their little box, I'm sure the world looks nice and tidy...
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Brother Douthat,
I always appreciate your clear-sightedness, but your gentle empirical eye seems more entranced and jaded by ideology than you realize. Stay vigilant — smartly constructed doors (of opportunity) don’t open into corners
The problem with all merit based systems is natural corruption and decline of performance. And there is no such thing from a Mendelian point of view of continuous generational ability at the same level of our parents. Talent is randomly distributed over generations. And talents in each of us have a shelf-life. We have to retire at some point no matter what we do.
Ross Douthat ought to have hung out a little more in the WASP citadels from Mount Desert Maine to the “dispersed” centers of WASPdom from Cambridge,Massachusetts down through Philadelphia, PA, to West Palm Beach, Florida, and Palo Alto, CA, and all the Jackson Hole, Wyoming “ranches and lodges” in between. For there you see the bell curve controlling any human attribute that we can imagine in any meritocratic order of ability, as time-bound, when all talents go up and fall down the way of the flesh.
Although we admire the abilities of other races, genders and ethnic groups, as we admire the talents of another family’s children, we tend to love and want to socially associate with our own in our own accustomed comfort zone. And that’s what draws the black elite BASPS to “the Ink-Well” on Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard, and WASPs on Beacon Hill, Boston, MA to Cape Cod and Naushon Island.
All happy families are happy alike because they all respond to one another alike. But they’re not happy because they are all at the top of any meritocratic curve.
And “noblesse oblige, pietas, caritas,” are not Anglo-Saxon words.
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@Joanne
Losing common sense isn’t always a bad thing. Slavery, geocentric universe, diseases as punishments from the gods...all used to be common sense notions
show me the aristocracy that "knew itself". just one example
Some Catholics like you and Steve Bannon are leading the faithful astray. It's not even Christian to be so xenophobic.
Remember the parable of The Good Samaritan? It's meant to teach acceptance of others not like ourselves. They may just be more moral (Christlike) than we are.
Your bashing of Pope Francis betrays the political, not moral, intentions of those of your ilk. You are turning the Catholic church away fom Jesus Christ.
Popes like John in the last century and Francis today try to lead us into a new and more peaceful world, but those who fear a loss of autocracy cannot understand.
3
My WASP family married rich, successful Quakers—Nantucket Whalers, & Pennsylvania steel industrialists. The Quakers were tolerant. See Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Exiles”.
Quakers were shunned by the puritans. They got along with native Americans, sometimes intermarrying.
WASPs gathered power & connections by marriage, and when they mixed with Quakers, they married into *tolerance*.
William Anderson
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Perhaps the “misreading” of your previous article was because your case was thin, Ross. Not because the readers didn’t understand.
1
No, Ross. We didn't ask.
4
What is it about conservatives? Making broad generalizations as though everyone in their neat little boxes thought and acted alike and were thus equally deserving of their value judgments?
Remember when Douthat blamed the resurrection of Roseanne Barr on the Boomers—all of us born between between 1946 and 1964? As though an Alabama bumpkin like me, born in the wake of WWII and forged by civil rights, women’s lib, the Viet Nam war and three earth-shattering assassinations in a row necessarily shared a world view with, say, Kansans still in diapers when a bullet ended Camelot?
These WASP/meritocrat boxes are the same thing. I was the first of my family to attend college and later finished law school. Am I one of Douthat’s hated meritocratic elite? And why is aspiring to be knowledgeable and competent something to be put down? Didn’t that disdain help propel the most ignorant president in memory to the Oval Office, someone who may crash our economy—or worse—through sheer incompetence?
And the absolute worst is this worship of WASP aristocrats, as though proles who seek knowledge and personal betterment could not have the soul of responsibility, integrity and duty Douthat attributes to the carousing prep school jocks who grew up to be Brett Kavanaughs.
No one ever had a corner on duty. And idealizing white aristocrats while piling putdowns on those who bettered themselves and now seek to better their country says worlds about “who and what” conservatives still are.
4
"And ascend they often did, because the older American system was both hierarchical and permeable, with room for actual merit even without a meritocratic organizing theory."
John Adams, who meets all your criterion for "meritocracy" and "elite" (since it is possible to meet both).....graduated from Harvard at number 17 even though, academically, he was number 1.
Why? Because, at that time, your graduation standing was based on family rank.
That went on for a long, long time.
That, friends, is not meritocracy. That, friends, is white affirmative action.
1
I was born into an aristocratic family in Iran. My father, a civil servant, practiced noblesse oblige as part of his every day life. He ferociously fought for meritocracy in the foreign ministry when he was deputy foreign minister. His kindness and civility toward those less privileged than him were legendary. During the Islamic revolution, when the masses pillaged and murdered aristocrats, these qualities saved his life. When I came to the US in 1979, I was plunged into a community of WASPs in my boarding school in Connecticut. Among us were Fords, a Bush and a Mars. In the several years that I spent there, never once did I hear an epithet, saw a gesture, or a look that made me feel uncomfortable about my national origin. The school shielded me from the news of the hostages; my fellow students treated me with respect. That is the loss Ross Douthat laments. Our present malaise, however, has nothing to do with aristocracy or its decline. The aristocratic class rises out of material resources acquired by one generation in less than "aristocratic" ways that furnish the future generations with comfort, culture, education, and in some cases, noblesse oblige. Our present malaise is due to extremism in our national character. Whether it is the emphasis on material success, or the rights of the individual over the collective, it negates balance, perspective, and basic civility we owe each other as a society. We always want to be the best, but we rarely pause to ask the best at what?
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Let’s cut to the chase. Meritocracy is bad because it tell people “You succeeded because you are the best.”
Which is, as anyone knows, usually hogwash. Yes, there are people who arrive in America with 50 cents in their pockets and then start google or something, but most people who succeed were already on, at worst, second base.
I went to one of the most competitive public high schools in America, and while most of my fellow alumni/ae did quite well, as you would expect, a disturbing number wound up in exactly the kind of lower middle class, grinding almost poverty that they grew up in. The middle and upper middle class kids either rocketed upward or maintained a solid middle class life.
The only difference between most of the kids who didn’t succeed and their less well educated parents is that their relative poverty is dignified by the debt load of a masters degree.
When you start life at home plate, even the kids born on first have an advantage. Even Babe Ruth never batted over .500.
But because meritocracy says all success is deserved, noblesse oblige? Out the window. Even simple empathy is in short supply.
It would be nice if we could recognize our modern aristocracy beyond the mindless “Check your privilege” chanting on the left, where children of an elite point to children of a different elite and say that THEY are privileged.
All of us aristocrats are privileged and our success depends on society’s success. Time to remember that and act like it again.
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@Objectively Subjective Are you sure it's not because top universities accept the brightest, hardest working students to learn from their brightest professors?
Wanting everyone to be equally poor is no way to frame morals.
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Though I'm not going to argue for a return to a patrician WASP "rule," I'll note that in our meritocratic age upward mobility has, ironically, ground to a standstill, seemingly everything has been commercialized, and the era of big monopolistic companies is coming back. This, combined with misbegotten wars, financial meltdowns, and the ignoring of working people that was partly responsible for Trump's rise, is a sign that - whatever the flaws or virtues of the old aristocracy - our present "meritocratic" order leaves a lot to be desired.
2
The original WASPs came to a new land with immense resources and were fortunate enough to reap its benefits. Sure they were risk takers but a confluence of time, industriousness and good fortune acted together to allow them to concentrate power and wealth that they possibly could not have ever attained in the lands they left behind. They were the torch bearers for the American dream. They had few threats then to maitaining their status quo in society.Capitalism seemingly worked.
But then came mass media with its constant promotion of wealth and materialsim as virtues to aspire. Everyone wised up to the idea that wealth and power went hand in hand .
Atheletes making millions and living the good life hobnobbing with the upper crust, social media personalities who attain overnite fame , reality television turned Presidents , tech tycoons who would do anything to get ahead, Wallstreet types who don't hesitate to play with the fate of nations -these are our inspirations on media day in and day out.
Never mind how the fame and fortune came about.
And throw into the mix of the myth of meritocracy. Now you have a toxic brew.
Competition is so intense now that no one can afford to act with noblesse oblige. In fact you have to grab everything you can while the going is good. Morals and ethics are for losers. No wonder our "Elites" are who they are these days.
83
The term meritocracy is misleading. It implies that those ablest to run the country do so. But that does not describe the nation in which we now live. As we experience it, meritocracy is "rule by the most meritorious--at anything." Any one of the thousand most wealthy individuals in the US has far greater say in how we are governed than even the best and brightest graduates of all of the best Political Science programs in the country combined. It is not rule by the ablest rulers, but rule by the ablest at amassing wealth (their will being carried out by the legislative meretrices).
Our current society is more aptly characterized as one in which a meritocrat-meretricious alliance create self-serving rules to the detriment of nearly everyone else, the former paying the latter to divide and conquer the public so they are too distracted to notice that they are being fleeced.
If we were living under the ablest rulers, then we'd be living in the best land ever (all other things being equal). Clearly, this does not describe the mess of a nation in which we live. It turns out that there is not a lot of overlap between those who govern well and those who are most rapacious. In fact, when you put the most avaricious in charge, they use the tools of governance to further enrich themselves. Surprising, huh? I'm not sure if this is significantly different than an old fashioned kleptocracy with the addition of kabuki elections.
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@prometheus25
Welcome to the kakistrocracy....from Russian-Republistan with love....where democracy, the common good and the will of the people can go pound salt while psychopaths like Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, Besty DeVos, Matthew Whitaker, Mike Pence, Jared and Ivanka, Brett Kavanaugh and our amoral Grifter-In-Chief convert the federal government into a Kremlin conference room.
Robber Barons and Reverse Robin Hoods have rediscovered a golden age of grifting.
Welcome to the bottom of the Republican political barrel.
159
@prometheus25 You are living in a golden era unlike the world has ever seen in a country founded on free speech, the innocence of the accused until proven guilty, and the belief in the fundamental worth of every individual. It is a miracle that such a country exists (the most casual read of history will illuminate this) and the corruption you point out is merely evidence that we are heirs to something both precious and prone to decay. We do live in the best land ever by almost any measure. If we hope to sustain it, it will not be through nihilistic cynicism.
4
Well done. And in the name of transparency, I am a certified WASP. It has been a problem all my life (good and bad), but through it all I knew where I came from and felt the moral obligation to make things better for everybody. I tried.
1
When Ross says WASP he is referring to the cultural legacy of the New England Puritans and their descendants, a culture which honored hard work, frugality and ethical behavior (@woofer). This culture is not in its essence aristocratic or white. I would have expected Ross, "the Christian" columnist. to highlight the religious foundation of that tradition. The choice is not between the WASP elite and a narrowly defined meritocracy, but between a life philosophy based on simplistic ideas of "economic" man - the libertarian and laissez faire capitalist view of society which sees only atomized individuals competing for monetary rewards, in which all human relations are modeled on the idea of a contract; and a philosophy whose origins are religious, where life, frankly, is tragic, and individuals are members of a society in which they are bound by myriad obligations, and ethical rules.
I am reasonably well versed in world history, 10 years living overseas, 60 years old. And my tentative conclusion is that the New England moment (English Puritans building a new home in America) represents a unique high point in world history, which is the origin of most of the positive elements of American civilization, and continues to be the source of that little bit of American global influence which is not based on pure power. It is the only thing differentiating us from China in the eyes of the rest of the world.
150
@CH
To be fair, one should mention the fates of the Indians, the witches and the Quaker martyrs. It wasn't such a high point for them.
19
@CH The WASP culture is in fact, white in its essence. It's in the name (in the "Anglo-Saxon" part if you prefer the W to stand for "Wealthy" rather than "White"). If Douhat wants to lament the loss of hard work, frugality, and ethical behavior in this country, he could do that without attributing those qualities to the elite within the dominant ethnic group--and then disingenously trying to redefine terms and needing to write another piece to explain that by WASP he didn't really mean WASP.
10
You don’t have to be a WASP to have a sense of duty and service to country. There are generations of military veterans, federal, state, and local government professionals, public school teachers, healthcare providers working with underserved populations that make this country possible.
4
Your are correct that one doesn't have to be a WASP to have a sense of duty and service to country. However, we live by these virtues as individuals. There is no power, class--secular or religious--espousing these values and, in a way, enforcing these as social standards. Hence the legends of us who serve are drowned out by greater legends who resent social rules and applaud self-advocacy.
@Yolanda Perez
Why do we need an aristocracy at all. I would prefer an equality of citizens educated in civic virtues and duties, encouraged to find satisfying and interesting work and persona and social relationships based on the common good of the community as a whole. I don't see this need for hierarchy as anything but nostalgia for an increasingly outmoded idea that comes from the less than successful ideas of a blood based nobility, a money based nobility, an ivy league based nobility or any other we can think of.
88
@Rebecca Hogan
The article wasn't about a need for aristocracy. It was about contrasting starting-from-privileged-circumstances WASP aristocrats with can-do-all-by-myself meritocrats and arguing that the later is much less willing to admit its initial given advantages.
23
@Rebecca Hogan While noble, the idea that everyone can start at all times from an equal playing field is impossible unless one of two conditions is met: people of merit must feel it to be their moral duty to NOT advantage their own children (which infringes on the natural affection of parents for their children) or government must insure that the playing field remains equal by force (which infringes on our ideas of individual freedom.)
7
@Rebecca Hogan The success of the human race and the foundations of civilization are built on our ability to form hierarchies in pursuit of shared goals. It is the reason why tribes have elders and chiefs, companies have vice presidents and CEOs, and nations have parliaments,primr ministers and presidents. Utopias predicated on a freedom from hierarchies have been tried and they resulted in governments that systematically killed tens of millions of their citizens and produced failed economies that could not even feed their populace (e.g., Stalin, Mao). Capitalism has produced plenty of its own injustices, but it has also lifted billions of people out of poverty. Pick your poison.
7
One has to admire the courage of anyone in this day and age who has anything positive to say about white Protestant elites. Like all taboo discussions, it is worth having if only because it introduces into the conversation elements that typically are systematically excluded as beyond the pale of civilized discourse.
My personal gripes against meritocracy are that it tends to be one-dimensional and arbitrarily frozen in time. One's fate in the meritocratic rat-race is largely determined by adolescent school grades and test scores. And these in turn are heavily influenced by family stability and support. While adolescent academic performance is a relevant factor in successful socialization, unduly emphasizing it fails to recognize the variety and breadth of human development.
What is appealing about the example of New England Puritans and Congregationalists and their descendants is the entirety of their historic culture, which honored hard work, frugality and ethical behavior as well as worldly success. These people were noble in spirit before they ever became rich, and that tradition was strong enough to withstand for a few generations the inevitable corruption of status, wealth and power.
95
@woofer
English Puritans that settled in Massachusetts in the 17th century became an increasingly intolerant lot, punishing and even executing Quakers and other non-conformists and conducting witch trials. Their leades required strict adherence to covenants. Puritans that returned to England in disgust and complained to the king became more accepting of Catholics and other religious groups than was the case in the isolated colony. One reason was a change of monarchs. Another was a more diverse society in England.
While New England Puritans may have revered hard work and frugality, their ethical behaviors often left much to be desired. They behaved as though they were a chosen race and this attitude defined them through succeeding generations. They were hardly noble of spirit; rather they had feet of clay as do we all.
51
@bkbyers
You know some Puritan history, but not enough. Everything you remark about the Puritans was inflected also by religion—in ways, and to an extent, that made their culture largely incomprehensible from even a differently-religious modern point of view. Scholars of Puritanism have to work for years to get past the present-minded biases your comment relies upon.
You aren't to blame for that by the way.
4
@bkbyers I'd like to think that I have feet of......... limestone? or on some days actually slate not just crumbly clay.
1
One of the problems of Ross's "case" is one of semantics, a confusion of apples, oranges, mangoes and passion fruit. Yes, as a concept, meritocracy supports the rise of those best qualified. Yes, aristocracy connotes heritage and privilege that convey superiority (George H.W. Bush, for example, or Jack Kennedy). But that doesn't mean that aristocrats could not have knowledge and skills that merit top positions. Or the converse: that meritocrats (is that even a word?) cannot come from the aristocracy.
Populism, which these days is often confused with meritocracy, implies motive: caring for "ordinary" people. This doesn't mean that leaders with an aristocratic background, or who have risen via a meritocratic system, could not connect with and act on the needs of people who are not like them . . . if they felt like it.
Perhaps the answer to the aristocracy versus meritocracy question Ross poses is not either/or, or even neither/nor, because it's the wrong question. As so many comments suggest, whether they are aristocrats or the product of meritocracy, our democracy needs leaders with a moral compass.
3
I agree with Mr. Douthat’s last point, WASPs certainly knew who they were. The problem was WASPs also knew who you were. And if you weren’t one of them, you didn’t get into that great college and you didn’t get that great job. Or you didn’t get that promotion because it went to the man who had all the right parents and the right connections. This is hardly the type of society to wish for. Although WASP (or just white privilege) culture still remains, things are slowly beginning to change. Apparently Mr. Douthat is troubled by this phenomenon. He cites all the evils he sees in his self imagined world of “meritocracy”. And while he would like to have a faith based aristocracy govern our day to day lives, he will have to settle for people who weren’t born into wealth, and weren’t educated at the best private schools through the legacy system. I personally put more faith in this new generation than either WASP culture or the religious aristocracy.
145
@Comet, you're guilty of the same over generalization as Douthat. In fact, everyone here who wants tidy little bins to put the world into is going to remain frustrated. I grew up in New England, derived from WASP families and yet, we had no money. Didn't own a home. Folks divorced. I went to school on loans and Pell grants and now have a decent job. Nothing was handed to me. Somewhere in there my mother made it clear that if you didn't work, you didn't eat. The experience of poverty was its own motivator. Good public schools and government support for college were my platform. If WASP leadership made that possible, good on 'em.
8
Brahmins, with their pedigrees, Christianity and fine education, serve themselves.
I was born in the 1950s, and in my lifetime public education has steadily declined into an abyss. The essential factor in American civics, that an excellent education is offered all citizens, so that it is possible for anyone of background to excel, is a tawdry, shameful, vestige of its inspirational envisioning.
How can this be, with ethical WASPS in charge, taking care of us?
Lack of education lowers the intelligence of civic debate, such that our electorate is so ignorant as to elect Donald Trump and disbelieve science and journalism.
Lack of education is the single greatest factor that fills our prisons. 75% of of our 2.5 million inmates are functionally illiterate, failed by our schools.
Criminal justice reform, desperately needed for decades. Where is the aristocracy when it comes to taking our penal system beyond cruel, feudal era policies of incarceration?
There's no room here to talk about our foreign policy and wars and whose interest is best served by them.
These are central, essential, elements of civic health that have only become more diseased and hopeless in my lifetime.
WASP elites tuck themselves into plush beds each night, in the knowledge that they will be eulogized as nobility, for protecting their own interests, and having fine manners.
115
@Eric
Do you really mean to equate science and journalism and subject them both to a character or intelligene litmus test of "belief"?
Science is a set of methods and thoughtful skepticism and empiricism is at its core. So one never "believes" in science as some thing that is "right" or "correct". Once considers scientific evidence, ensuring the the application of the conclusions aligns with the empirical work that was performed to support the conclusions.
Journalism is as corruptible as any human pursuit and journalists often bring strong biases and pre-existing narratives with them, searching for and publishing only those facts that align with the narrative. Skepticism aplenty is demanded from any thoughtful person.
5
@Eric
Remember that most text books come from Texas to appeal to that state's point of view and civics based on Puritan values isn't part of that point of view.
6
@Eric You are right to mourn the failure of our public education system to enlighten the masses. Of equal import, has been the failure of modern society to offer a compelling narrative of moral conduct and meaning. Nietzsche predicted that the death of God would leave modern humanity rudderless requiring a new superman capable of constructing his own system of morality, like such a thing is possible in the span of a single lifetime.
One hundred years later we are only now coming to grips with the reality that science is not serviceable as a religion, though some treat it as such. In the wake of this failure, opiates are now the opiate of the people.
6
One reason the Greatest Generation did a better job governing the country is that most people from even the highest elites of society had connections with people of more humble backgrounds. This was best seen during World War 2 when everyone whether you were a Kennedy a Bush, a Roosevelt, a celebrity like Jimmy Stewart or a sports star such as Ted Williams, all fought together with people from farms, slums and factories. The draft really meant that virtually everyone (or at least every man) had to serve the country. By the time of Vietnam the elites had added enough loopholes that their children could avoid the draft (see Donald Trump's foot and Bill Clinton at Oxford). I say bring back mandatory national service with no exceptions for 19-20 year olds. The pampered elite will learn the virtues of people that heretofore they have avoided or deplored.
402
@Steve. Thank you, you nailed it. In today's culture especially amongst the elites a basic understanding of just because you can doesn't mean you should has been forgotten and or lost. The period of Vietnam and the subsequent political and domestic issues of the time served as a smoke screen for personal responsibility. It became all to easy to regard the struggles of citizenry as hypothetical or of moral construction rather than actual. Simply put even the most well meaning have been and are far to insulated from the consequences of their ideas and decisions. Citizens United has further damaged and solidified wealth into our nation's idea of meritocracy. Do you see my point? From what schema could Justice Roberts draw from but that of the meritocracy he served to rise to such prominence. A blind man could have seen the faults of those decisions and a wise man would have searched high and low for precedence to make a different one.
38
@Steve I agree. Ironically, it was that WW2 generation, or the middle class whites among them, moving to the suburbs that helped along our present divisions. The suburbs became a bubble of isolation from the rest of our fellow citizens, a Truman Show in real life.
29
@Steve
Excellent. Nothing like Basic Training to level the playing field. Speaking from experience.
43
Labeling today's ruling elite as Meritocratic, and those of the "good old days" as being "Benevolent Aristocrats" is ludicrous.
The huge prosperous middle class of the US did not appear because of a widely shared noblesse oblige among Aristocrats. The widely shared prosperity of the New Deal was fiercely fought by nearly the entirety of the existing Aristocracy.
To create a politically and economically powerful middle class, it was necessary for FDR to basically declare class war on the Aristocrats of the time. With the powerful mandate created by the failure of unregulated capitalism (the Great Depression), FDR's revolutionary economic policies founded the unprecedented growth of the US middle class.
The Aristocrats of today, may *hire* so-called Meritocrats. But the true power lies with those with the money - whether new money, or old money. And if Aristocracy has any meaning today, it means those with *money* - period.
Those hired "Meritocrats", are totally co-opted. Those in the media don't want to upset their advertisers or owners on economic issues. Decades of influence by donors - to think tanks, lobbyists, economic departments of universities, etc, make "Meritocrats" very dismissive of economic views - however sound - that go against the status quo consensus. This consensus - the opposite of New Deal policy - is creating ever greater inequality, and long term economic, industrial, and political decline of our nation.
463
@A Populist
And that's the best rebuttal to Douthat's argument we're likely to see.
Not that I don't think Ross has an argument to make, as far as it goes. But I think his criticism of the meritocrats smacks of the Calvinist/Social Darwinist anti-intellectualism that has always been part of the American ethos, and doesn't take into account the co-opting of actual "experts" by the monied classes in our one-dollar one vote system that claims corporations have the same rights as people. In the end, even if they're not always WASP's anymore, those with the huge amounts of do-re-mi still get the meritocrats to kowtow to them.
What may be ever sadder is that these days many of those do-re-mi'ers started as meritocrats and don't remember how it felt when they were exploited now that they can do the exploiting.
57
@A Populist
A series of good points. Thank you.
Except one. In my view he never quite fawns over the old Anglo-Saxon elites the way you seem to think he did ("ludicrous"). Maybe it's because I'm not a "Populist", not exactly, anyway.
In the two columns, he wasn't asserting the disappearance of one solidly wonderful, benevolent overlord group and the insertion of selfish, practically evil overlords in their place.
He was asserting the disappearance of an overlord group with a conspicuous influential minority of wonderfully benevolent people and its gross replacement by selfish, practically evil overlords.
Wide difference.
15
@A Populist
Good observations -
I grew up hearing (in my family) that FDR was a "traitor to his class"...and I came to the conclusion, early on, that I'm thankful that he was - to the degree that he was.
We need another FDR today - wouldn't be nice to have a candidate for higher office who was invested in projects that met the definition of the "common good" - universal healthcare, renewable energy, a new Civilian Conservation Corps, and taxation that didn't favor the rich and corporations? Who, in addition, had good manners?
29
perhaps we could ask, instead, a question like"how do we teach a sense of duty or noblesse oblige to the masses?" or "how do we teach individuals to recognize their privilege-- and act on it, regardless of identity?"
this brings up interesting points, and I'm reminded of a concept that I learned through Malcolm Gladwell, about education based on "weak links" or "strong links"--do we spend $100 to educate a genius, or $10 each on educating 10 people to become proficient? in a society that passes so much privilege on to the next generation, how can it be a real meritocracy if we do not bring every "weak link" up as far as we are able to?
1
Hey. If you're going to bring back an aristocracy, I'd like to be a member. It would be wonderful to be born into privilege without the upsetting tension of having to earn it. I'm willing to pretend modesty, if that's the price of membership.
2
Ross Douthat is trying to dig his way out of a hole. of course, everyone who read his column on WASPs misunderstood him. None of us understands history the way he does, just as none of us understands merit and diversity as "different ways of shaping an elite."
Not buying it. Starting with his hagiography of Bush 41, who looks good only in comparison to Bush 43 and Trump, Douthat attributes Bush 41 merits to being a WASP. Douthat, who like most conservatives drives forward while looking in the rear view mirror, pines for the halcyon days of "aristocratic self-conception." This is just a less indirect way of saying Make America Great Again.
Douthat continues trying to wriggle out of the position of disliking Trump's manners but supporting everything he does. It can't be done, certainly not with sophistry.
9
the WASP aristocracy did not just "dominate" key areas of American political, cultural, and financial life: they actively conspired to exclude everybody else as the lower orders.
while this old order has thankfully faded, it has not ended, it is not forgotten, and the power and priveledge (and money) it hoarded are still firmly ensconced in American society.
3
Two columns that basically boil down to:
People with privilege, however obtained, should be more self-aware and a lot less selfish. This is hard, and has never been fully achieved, because people are ... people.
Sure. OK. FDR good, DJT bad.
Still, I'm not sure there is much benefit in looking back at the old WASP establishment for guidance beyond a few cherry picked examples.
178
Yes, who should have things of value, the earners or the inheritors? And, should having things of value determine who rules? And, is determining "who" rules more important than determining "what" rules?
Two things spring to mind when I ponder these questions. The first is a relatively ancient economic notion that a "thinker" like Douthat would never, ever consider germane to the sociopolitical content of some of his columns, especially this one. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
The second is something that, while it has always been a difficult objective for even the most rational among us to reach, a pipe dream really, it has never been more challenged in our slice of humanity than it is right now. I speak of course, of the Rule of Law, as opposed to rule by people.
1
Douthat is very confused. First, he confuses an elite's civic values (or lack of them) with the way an elite gained elite status. Douthat believes the New England WASPs Inherited wealth and status is associated with a sense of civic virtue. There are certainly examples, but there are also examples of rapacious, corrupt wealth-seeking and the weakness of generations benefitting from inherited (and unearned) wealth and status. Then, he apparently doesn't understand the concept of merit. It is true that starting life as the child of educated parents gives a leg up -- but it is incoherent to make that a case against meritocracy while simultaneously cheerleading for pure inherited aristocracy. The U.S. meritocracy may not be pure, but that is because the aristocracy Douthat yearns for did not completely disarm itself. Finally, Douthat never describes how it is possible to increase diversity in leadership based on something other than a meritocracy. Does he envision the white, male WASP aristocracy periodically anointing a few plebeians? And does he believe that everyone else would simply tolerate that social structure? Douthat should turn his attention to the real question which is the need to teach civil virtue and values to people of every social caste.
5
I wish you wouldn't use the term 'aristocracy' to describe these people. They are the ones who became wealthy through the rapacious capitalist system that rules this country. Then they used their resources to ape the British nobility (and in most cases not very well).
Very few of them feel any obligation to the less fortunate, whose labor over the centuries made this minority of people rich. It's all about money. There is no aristocracy.
6
I agree with the view Ross takes on this and I'm not a conservative. A rough comparison might be the view one might have taken after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following WWI. Having gone through the carnage and suffering of the two world wars and a choice between Hitler and Stalin, an older person back then might have wished that the relatively peaceful and prosperous old days under the Hapburgs could return. Even though the empire was lead by an aristocracy in the traditional sense, the ethnic Germans in Austria did eventually share power with other ethnic groups in the empire. Not so bad compared to what happened between 1914 through 1945 and beyond for many of those people. So, a very rough analogy with similar sentiments to those Ross expressed in this column.
1
There are plenty of arguments here that might have allowed Ross to speculate on how meritocratic elites might counter slipping into a clandestine quasi-aristocracy.
However arguing that merITocracy is an aggravation of aristocracy is absurd in its face, a sloppy play of language. Moreover, Obama. unlike the Bushes, was for strengthening, not weakening, the inheritance tax, as well as for more progressive taxation and hands up to needy students.
1
"They knew who and what they were."
Yes, they knew they were the rich WASP's and that they were the best and the brightest, that everyone else was inferior.
They were wrong.
6
Your faulty premise is that we have a meritocracy. Maybe ask the lead-poisoned children of Flint, Michigan in 20 years about our "meritocracy", or the one-third of black men who've been felonized in the school-to-prison pipeline.
Our first black President even had to ride on a wave of white privilege. For the more typical result, look at what just happened to Andrew Gillum in Florida last month. Can anyone say with a straight face that Ron DeSantis won the election on MERIT?
Meritocracy is impossible in a society as unequal as this one.
1
I commented that the first piece was clear in inferring that we’ve lost something with the WASPs, but unclear describing what that thing might be.
I asked the question, and will ask it again, why is Mr. Douthat a fan of leaders like George H.W. Bush but so virulently opposed to leaders like Barack Obama? To me — and I’m a WASP — President Obama was a reincarnation of Jimmy Stewart wholesomeness and George H.W. Bush noblesse oblige, perhaps without the unpleasant sense of entitlement. But Mr. Douthat was no fan of President Obama, not by a long stretch.
In fact, the word we hear most often from Mr. Douthat is “populism,” as a good thing. By any standard the “populism” that appeals to Mr. Douthat (and I must say, that I have trouble distinguishing from racism or know-nothing-ism) is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the WASP-ism he now finds so attractive.
This second piece does nothing to clarify those contradictions.
1
"As a consequence, meritocrats are often educated to be bad leaders, and bad people, in a very specific way — a way of arrogant intelligence unmoored from historical experience, ambition untempered by self-sacrifice."
Ross, it sounds to me as if you're spending too much time with your fellow Republicans. Most of my friends are affluent Democrats who long for a society with equal opportunity, more progressive taxation, and universal health care.
4
The vineyard is an island. Global Heating is here. Ocean temperatures are rising. Volune of water increases with temperature (above 4° C). Hence.. See: reefs; seamounts; fishing banks.
I've posted this elsewhere, but it bears repeating. 'Noblesse obligue' doesn't mean 'charity'. It means 'the duty of high birth' towards those who are RULED by the high-born. It's a totally aristocratic notion. It has nothing to do with throwing coins into the poor box.
By the way, Ross will be charitably advised to study the case of the Burghers of Calais, 1347, and their submission to King Edward III. He can study both the history of the event and the myth that grew up around it. At any rate, it's a stark example of meritocracy submitting to aristocracy.
1
I would say "no thanks" to Douthat's propositions. WASP nostalgia overlooks their track record. Sure, there were those like Averell Harriman, but there were also those like John Foster and Allen Dulles, who ran roughshod over the third world, overthrowing leftist democracies in favor of dictatorships. In reality, this elite had already diversified: John Negroponte was the last of this kind in government.
Another reservation is that aristocracy is self-serving. In a narcissistic society such as ours today, it would be natural for an aristocracy to be oblivious and insensitive to the lower classes.
Finally, from earlier writings, Douthat's notion of Catholicism is authoritarian; my best time in Catholic school was at one run by Marianists - who are much more liberal. The Marianists have a philosophical, inquiring bent that doesn't seem to be present with Benedictines or Jesuits. Douthat would probably have a cow with Bishop Robert Barron's popular videos, and the educated view that Barron espouses.
Ross, this line of reasoning is not up to your standards. Sure, the WASP elite had good manners; the current system drains the middle of the country of its talent; and those of us fortunate enough to succeed on the coasts are likely to be co-opted. But as you flail for a lifeline, you appear to be arguing that the old elite cared more about the common person than does the new, slightly more diverse elite. That is an absurd view, unsupported by history. I'd rather be ruled by a meritocrat. At least she is smart, and is more likely to extend the ladder down the economic scale.
You are nostalgic for a day when your talents would have done you little good.
4
This discussion is silly. “...meritocrats are often educated to be bad leaders, and bad people, in a very specific way — a way of arrogant intelligence unmoored from historical experience .... The way of the “best and the brightest” at the dawn of the technocratic era…”
A readers of Halberstam's "The Best and The Brightest" know, this was the description given to the blue bloods and the meritocrats, like Robert McNamara, brought into the Kennedy administration to guide the war in Vietnam. There was plenty of arrogant intelligence to go around in both groups. The result being a disaster for the people of Vietnam and the United States.
Neither group has a monopoly on virtue or knowledge. Good leaders have come from both groups. What Douthat does not realize is that implicit in any suggestion of "WASP" virtues carries with it the baggage of WASP vices and the obvious implication that a stratified, white, Protestant society is a better one.
1
HW Bush's father appears to have risen from Ohio to Yale via a family connection. His family could not afford Yale. His room mate set him up on Wall Street as a minor financier and he rose to the top of the corporation. Pure Horatio Alger.
So he fathers HW Bush, sends him to prep school, then to Yale. WW2 comes along and he serves with great distinction. He is without particular intellectual merit but he has access to a network of associations. Family wealth sets him up in the oil business in Texas and he prospers. Good for him. Not everyone has the family wealth to go into the oil business.
He then plays in Republican politics. No great thoughts or leadership. But he worms his way into various high level positions becoming Reagan's VP.
Now, on the subject of merit, let's talk about his children. In particular, W, Jeb and Neil. As mediocre a crew to spring from the loins of an average "american aristocrat". From W we get a war of choice in Iraq, from Jeb we get a governor who now makes hundreds of millions of dollars off of government funded charter schools, and from Neil, Silverado Savings and Loan and he is now back in government charter education business.
HW may have been affable. Meritocratic.
I was in Vietnam when W somehow, through merit I am sure, got into the Texas Air National Guard and protected Texas from invading Mexicans and Oklahomans. He then descended into who knows what and his military record disappears without merit.
4
Who does Ross think reads this paper?
The “aristocracy” , the WASPs were not paragons of virtue, and routinely treated workers with outrageous cruelty and set them against Black Americans as the means of preventing a unified work force. A cheap work force is a priority of the aristocrats and the meritocracy.
It is confusing to read an analysis that ignores history and facts and concludes with a call to transplant the corrupt Catholic Principates to America. Hundreds of years of religious war in Europe are apparently not part of Douthat’s perspective. Such an egregious lapse reduces discussion to meaningless conjecture.
Let’s consider the concrete harm to humanity and democracy when inequality is institutionalized by the wealthy. Elections are purchased, laws are manipulated, the elite ar immune to law, de-facto aristocracy is re-established in the absence of measures to prevent aristocracy instituted by our founders.
The “establishment clause” in the !st Amendment prevents the Catholic principate...but the Catholic SCOTUS may rule differently as they did in “Hobby Lobby”.
4
Manners do not make the man.
But - it's true - a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.
Being born into a ruling class does not make learning from history and caring for the less fortunate more likely. This is yet another variation of conservative pining for an imagined yesterday.
5
Please get to the point, Mr. Douthat. We are not really talking about merit. We are not really talking about manners or morality. We are talking about the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few and the lack of wealth (and along with it, power) in the empty hands of the vast majority of human being.
There may be something like $150 trillion in "assets under management" in the United States. I may be off a few trillion... All of this money is sitting there, looking for "product" to increase itself, and professionals and algorithms are there to make sure this happens. It really doesn't matter if a few billionaires are ethical and feeling because there are also billionaires who are murders and crooks and perverts. It's the sheer concentration of money that matters, because it deprives others of opportunity, it corrupts governments to do the bidding of those seeking to add to their fortunes, it looks for trouble as it competes for "product" that is lacking (which causes bubbles and scams and high-risk investments), and it creates a social stratification that ignores everything that is not money (even the survival of the golden-egged goose).
Perhaps Typhoid Mary was a nice person, and on one level, I guess that matters. But in a larger sense, did it matter what kind of "person" she was? Same for money and people who own most of it.
57
It is always highlighted that if you know and understand your privilege, no matter where it cane from, you will be able to understand those who do not have your same privileges. Then a decision must be done: to use that privilege for good or to continue without engaging in your community. Many choose the latter because is easier. What mr. Douthat wants to look into the WASPs is that sense of responsibility in the choice to do better, to use, in current terms, your privilege to help for social justice.
Interesting perspective. With great power comes great responsibility. I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg and many other tech elites get this. But it is wrong to suggest that all aristocrats of the past got this...Louis the XVI and Marie Antoinette come to mind. Any elite, meritocratic, aristocratic, or otherwise is prone to corruption and selfishness and often tilts that way. I think the truth the author spotted in the remembrance of President Bush is that in a just society, privilege should be born like a burden, a responsibility to serve culture and renew it with our talents and resources, and with this the corollary imperative to hold our peers to the same standard. Our institutions, particularly universities, and leaders do us a major disservice when they promote ideologies of rights and privileges without an equal (perhaps greater) serving of responsibility and service.
1
I am old enough to have seen a turning point in the 1980's led by Reagan and Friedman and others who changed much of society's and business' acceptance of all sharing the cost of society for the goal of building and maintaining a society that was productive, fair and provided opportunity.
This was manifrsted in public support of very inexpensive education through college, building of infrastructure like the highways, supporting housing and the GI Bill. Education was the precious door to opportunity for everyone. My working class parents NEVER complained about taxes. They were happy to pay them so their children would have the opportunities that we did. We have been very productive and good citizens of this country.
However, when Reagan came to power it began the trend toward narcissism (the Me Generation) and away from shared values. About the same time business abandoned corporate responsibility and only cared about enriching already wealthy investors. Jobs and wages became an expense to cut for more profit with obvious negative results for society.
Meritocracy can be good when the merit that is valued has some kind of value to society, not just making money using it accumulate more money at everyone else's expense (which we have proven to be disastrous). The media has a role in this by constantly making heroes of wealthy business leaders who then get overcome by greed and narcissism (sound like anyone we know?).
Let's try a meritocracy based on real merit.
9
education?
one of the main ways the WASP establishment maintained their power was to fiercely restrict access to higher education,with ironclad quotas on admission of Jews, blacks, Asians to the better private academies and even to some that were not so private, like Cornell.
it wasn't just the clubby Hasty Pudding aspect of limiting access for the wrong sort, it was a policy designed to counter two horrifying dangers to WASPy hegemony :
> that a good education and the credential of a top school would allow others to advance in society...
> and that mixing of the classes would pollute their purity - WASP co-eds at the sister schools might meet and even fall for totally unacceptable boys of questionable race or religion.
1
While I rarely agree with Mr. Douthat on anything, I certainly don’t this time either. The appearances of “Noblesse Oblige” in the purportedly dismantled WASP hierarchy was a defensive mechanism to assist in maintaining cultural and political power. Rumors of the demise of that hierarchy are wildly exaggerated. With few notable exceptions, the old order has co-opted the new order, albeit behind the scenes through easing access to those tightly held cultural institutions and the levers of political power. That said, your paragraph characterizing of Mr. Trump is spot on.
6
All men (and women) are not born equal. This is a myth that continues to be repeated and needs to be recognized as a lofty, but false idea. I believe what you are writing about is our great melting pot experiment which is actually more of a salad. It allows immigrants to compete with the native born in business. It allows women of all skin color to run for political office. It allows poor people who have a thirst for knowledge to find it and better themselves through education. What is missing in the WASP discussion is that at one time Americans believed those fortunate people who were born to privilege had a responsibility to live moral, exemplary lives. Those people became leaders not just because they were born on third base, but because there was family and social pressure to be honest, loyal, and basically good citizens. Something has changed. Now it's all about the privilege of moneyed individuals who buy elections and rock stars who are admired even as they beat their girlfriends. It would be useful to teach these important classes throughout high school: history, civics, and ethics. We are sorely lacking in knowledge of all three.
11
It seems Toss is cherry picking. You can find robber barons in both categories, probably equally distributed. It comes down to individual ethics and principles.
4
Douthat's column is weird. But if you look carefully, there are some interesting similarities among our past Presidents. They generally fall into three groups. The Generals - military leaders that included Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower. The Royals - those who grew up with privileged backgrounds with a history of service. They include Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bush, and Bush. The Commoners - people who came from nowhere. These are the most interesting because of the oddity that they all came from small towns or rural background - Lincoln, Truman, Nixon, Regan, Carter, Clinton. Note that none of them, with the possible exception of Obama, grew up in a city. What of Trump who seems to be the outlier- well he certainly grew up with privilege, but not a family history of service, which would seem to be a part of his problem. And what about the strange recent number that were left-handed, - Ford, Bush I, Clinton, Obama?
4
Contrary to Mr. Douthat's fantasy, the Catholic Kennedys were about as welcome to the WASP elite as the Corleones to Las Vegas.
@W.A. Spitzer, the lefty thing is an easy answer. Having to overcome, daily, the struggles of one of the last minorities against whom discrimination is legal is character building.
A problem with aristocracy and inheriitance, as described in the book "Capital" is that we are quickly reaching the point where more and more wealth, that will not trickle down, is accumulated through inheritance. This, of course, means a more concentrated power.
4
death tax!!!!
Putting aside the sociological slicing and dicing of different societal groups---the essential dilemma confronted by leadership/managerial class is finding the right balance between discipline and disruption: too much discipline results in stagnation; too much disruption results in confusion. Great Presidents--Lincoln, FDR--found that right balance---the least successful---Hoover, Carter---were unable to find that sweet spot between adoption and adaptation.
3
It all depends what you mean by meritocracy. If it means the value-less money-grubbing culture of our current "elites" from Trump to Zuckerman, i'd agree. But there is another reading. In science, for example, most of tge oustanding work has been done by people raised in the middle classes. Hardly any aristocrats in sight (a few exceptions prove the rule). The same is true in the arts. Giving opportunities to people from all classes ensures that we always have great artists and scientists. That's not what the WASP culture was all about...
6
What we have lost is not the Aristocracy. We have lost what used to be called common -Common Sense, Common Courtesy and Common Decency.
27
Unfortunately I think that Ross misses cause and effect, and simply assumes that some nebulous class of people 'decided' to change the system. No such thing happened. Nor did we ever have a meritocracy nor do we have one now. That is unless you define merit as 'money-making ability' over all other measures.
No, what happened was simple: money took over and money won. So why is it so hard for the winners in this system to be self-aware and reflective upon their position? Why is it so hard for them to be stewards of the country? Because they won only because of money, and the prerequisites for making money today are 1) Be greedy and mean if you have to. No education necessary.
Why is this system completely doomed? Because the money most of the winners make has been allowed to leverage the futures of everyone else through an excessive reliance upon credit and lending. Back in the so-called WASP days, higher education could be achived with a part-time waiting job. Today that thought is ludicrous, and neither party is willing to solve the problem. Only independents seem to be brave enough to propose a real solution.
Instead both parties agree that student loans are the answer. Don't anyone be fooled by Joe Biden -- he's a banker's friend and believes full force in student loans. He's not even close to the most qualified to run the country. He also apparently believes in mass incarceration. Joe is not a progressive. His only progressive value is diversity.
7
Not a historian and accepting of a not insignificant WASP contribution to a not inconsiderable good in 21st century American culture.
Nevertheless, can't help the feeling that what folks long for in Bush 41 is the genuine affect of a genuinely decent man.
And that such affect might be fairly be contrasted, without denigration of any of them, to the affects of two other presidents who were members of the same aristocracy as Bush 41: FDR and Woodrow Wilson.
Maybe a bit oversimple, but this old man's final answer.
5
Winners of the Meritocracy are now busily involved in the great task of turning their winning position into an aristocracy by assuring their progeny inherit their position by gaming the merit system.
15
@entprof As it ever was.
In its effort to elevate itself, the new elite, especially in academia, has created a straw man past that has very little relation to the reality of 19th and 20th century America. The United States has always had a deeply ambivalent relationship with the northeastern WASP elite--as that elite well understood. Not a single member of that elite occupied the White House from John Quincy Adams in 1829 to Theodore Roosevelt in 1901. Many of the movers and shakers of the twentieth century came from relatively modest backgrounds or did not belong to that elite for other reasons, including Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton. Many of those men rose because higher education, in those days, was so cheap. Yes, nonwhite minorities and women only very rarely achieved power in those days, but white male America was far more democratic in many important ways than our new elite is today.
6
I don't mind people getting rich but they should not only pay their fair share, which they don't, they should pay a little more. If not for altruistic reasons but then for practical ones. If we help pull up the less fortunate then they can not pull us down.
15
@Rick Altruism is the desire to pull us down.
@Rick We no longer have a progressive tax system which is what the yellow jackets are protesting in France. By excluding the wealthy from the endeavor of supporting the government financially, the burden falls on the poor and middle class. This results in an unbearable economic inequality. The revolution caused by the bad behavior of aristocrats is being televised in France. There is some possibility that a similar movement will take place here... or perhaps it already did with “Occupy”. Quashed by the Royalists. The 21st century is likely to see many such mini-revolutions until the world population begins to diminish (if it does). Fertility in the West is already going down, in large part because the standard of living is in descent. Money hoarding by the rich is not productive in any way.
Oh, by the way. I have been going to Marthas Vinyard for 50 years. I am neither rich nor WASP. It costs less than Ocean City Maryland, bub.
2
There was a multi-lingual Catholic aristocracy in the Americas. It ran from Quebec, along the Great Lakes, then down the Mississippi River and into Central and South America. The northern, French branch was, as aristocratic empires go, in many ways admirable—it treated native peoples and their land with some respect. The southern branch, Spanish, was as appalling a slave state as has ever existed. Instead of yammering in your column next weekend, read some Francis Parkman.
9
We are about to enter 2019. We are not going back to the days of aristocracy! This column just seems so pointless.
8
Merits and demerits of the column aside - Trump a WASP? A parasitic wasp if any insect at all, in a generous interpretation.
5
Trump is no WASP. In the National Cathedral he made no attempt to read along with, let alone voice, the recitation of the Apostles’ Creed.
Please stop. You should not get a redo. Your arguments are not sound. Meritocracy fails when opportunity is limited. The end.
14
Meritocracy is a form of selection, therefore limiting opportunity to a few, however you select them. What exactly is the selection criteria in a meritocracy? Is it Darwinian? The survival of the fittest? Promoting the greatest and most destructive competition? Then it sounds a like like Trump and the extreme right wing of the Conservative party.
Perhaps you need to rethink this.
1
“ somewhat WASPy Barrack Obama “. Yeah, one of the GOOD ones. Ross, stop digging. Please.
Seriously.
19
Diversity in the upper class and associated elites means the rest of us will continue to be exploited only now by a rainbow of despicable scavengers.
7
Ross, you already have " a multicultural, multilingual Catholic aristocracy from Quebec to Chile."
They are called bishops. They are multilingual (they all speak Latin, as well as their mother tongue), they are certainly Catholic, and they are at least as aristocratic as any pedophile teacher or headmaster at St. Paul's or Choate.
8
Intelligent,creative, hard working, and well educated individuals with integrity are an asset to any society regardless of their identity group labeling.
Societies that do not value these qualities will not prosper.
9
Stratification of societies is the default condition.
Abilities aren't necessarily distributed equally across groups.
Therefore, diversity/parity is typically accomplished at the expense of meritocracy, efficacy and excellence.
Achieving gender parity in math, for example, would typically require affirmative action. Larry Summers was summarily canned when he suggested gender difference in ability accounts for the gender disparity in Harvard's math dept.
Forcing gender parity in STEM weakens America's position vs its adversaries. Forced parity is about more than retrogression. It is a national security threat.
3
@Marian
Offer the opportunity with entry parity, rate the successful accomplishment, choose the best.....
The aristocracy Ross Douthat celebrates were children of the Gilded Age culture. And something about this column and the previous one reminded me of an Edith Wharton novel. Picture a comfortably set up scion of Gilded Age Aristocracy; he's complaining about interlopers of mysterious provenance overwhelming the established order with their graceless manners and questionably acquired wealth. Of course, even as they were complaining, Wharton's guardians of noblesse oblige were wringing full value from the money and everything else that the outsiders brought with them. I think Wharton understood her aristocracy more clearly that Douthat understands his.
4
@Maggie Mae
The roots of the older American aristocracy date back to the 1600's. Some people were good at it - working hard, building an economy, bettering themselves and broadcasting their efforts towards a common good. There was a shared respect for their achievements and (some of) their social ethics. We use the inventions, the infrastructure and the laws they supported and built.
Some people in their circle were parasites.
I think Douthat supports their general code of moral conduct and their respect for "clear-eyed", intelligent work that improves the country. As a style of living, it's got legs and it's becoming open to anyone who's capable and willing to do the work.
Self knowledge is no guarantee of merit: the Klan, for instance, have a strong sense of identity and purpose.
WASP-ish-ness describes an historical perception of a dominant group within a particular context, but these traits may be totally unsuited to the 2020s and should be evaluated with enlightened minds rather than nostalgia.
3
Excellent article again on what ails America. Meritocracy does not solve the tribal instincts of humans. Humans through out history have always developed elites. These elites can create their own tribes based not necessarily on ethnicity; but on money, brains, alma mater etc. The problem is that Americans need to mix in their late teens and 20s before they enter their elites. That mixing hopefully allows the future elites to develop some knowledge and maybe even empathy for their fellow citizens who do not make it into the 1% or 0.1%. One Reason the Conservative FDR, who grew up on third base, may have better understood the human misery of the Great Depression was his struggles from his Polio. On the other hand Queen Marie Antoinette of France , brought up a German Princess, when told the people of Paris were rioting because they had no bread, suggested they eat cake instead. She lost her head.
8
Sorry RD, swing and a miss. The nostalgia for G.H.W. Bush is not about aristocracy but fidelity. His resume of service to his country, wife and family is burnished by fidelity to his nation's principles. It's the stark contrast of the current officeholder and what once was a standard of the job.
10
In the UK many still believe in their aristocracy, particularly the monarchy. It is more than just a symbol of times past; it is also viewed as something to look up to and, in a way, aspire to as an elevated way of living. From that viewpoint, our old aristocracy provided the same. Many WASPs built libraries & museums and endowed universities for example - something for which we should all be grateful. We don't have to like them personally, nut we do have to respect those who gave and still give back in these ways.
2
As Shantideva asks, "Where can fish and animals be taken where they could not be killed? The renunciation of doing harm is the perfection of discipline."
The perfection of discipline must be a human endeavor. The ideas of aristocracy and meritocracy belie the all-encompassing need for every human being to simply learn and practice loving-kindness toward oneself, and all other life. Only this discipline is truly required and only the decision to practice this discipline will save this world. It is not learned through meritocracy because it is a universal need and a universal desire. We all share it because we are all human. "The law commands us to do what we would do naturally, if we only had love. The Way consists of finding that love, which then becomes the law." - Arnaud Desjardins
5
As we, ever so slowly, age out of this life, we will find that giving a hand up to someone who is able, but not enabled, is a never ending joy.
If we do that, if we help the coming generation achieve, can we not have the self-confidence that, ever so slowly, they will follow our example?
Like Russ, I am rooted in Catholic social philosophy, in which creating good for others is an expression of divinity. For all the sins of the Church, this powerful message, once lived, brings abundant life. A message for Sunday if there ever was one.
Noblese oblige belongs to us all.
9
I think Mr. Douthat needs to explore the duality of the new meritocratic elite. There is one in the private economic sphere and one in the public service sphere where careerism and bleeding the people's tax dollars is part of the job description and endless and omnipotent government is the apparent goal. I think that might help explain why the original WASP elite was so successful as they jumped back and forth between the two wholly different occupational worlds. Today we live in a cult of bureaucracy where huge powers accumulate among those careerists with seemingly infinite budgets to cause mischief or disrupt the culture and where the basic hierarchy of society is viewed as something to be torn asunder.
Among the ideals of the new government meritocracy is the belief in forced equality through income redistribution wherein they determine who is deserving and who is not.
The meritocracy in the private sphere, where advancement comes through the sweat of the brow and the rewards can be huge is now under attack by the cultists in the bureaucracy more than ever. As they provide the financing for the redistributionist schemes of the bureaucrats, it behooves those bureaucrats to tread lightly less they pump the well dry. Because they rarely venture outside the cult (not culture) of bureaucracy, they lack understqnding of how it works and how fragile and often fleeting a growing, vibrant economy is. The Obama years proved it.
6
@Dougal E
“The sweat of the brow”....
Please. The only brows sweating are on others laboring to sustain their masters’ wealth.
I agree with much in this column (and some of the last one, too). In the last one, however, you (approvingly) quoted someone suggesting that the best way to solve this problem would be to let our new aristocracy harden. God help us if it gets any "harder" than it already is.
Rather, I suggest that -- for all its flaws -- what this country desperately needs now is something it hasn't had in 80 years: a strong dose of FDR-style egalitarianism.
I think you'd agree that, while it's about money, it's about much more than money. It's about meaning, too. Well, those stranded outside our supposedly "meritocratic" elite are increasingly not just doomed to economic struggle, but also struggle for meaning. They face a capitalist economy that has metastasized out of control: one that measures them only by their ability to earn, and no longer thinks they're worth much.
But there's plenty in this country that needs building and fixing, even if markets (and the politicians they own) have completely lost interest in that work. There's plenty of mentoring to do, plenty of need to help people one-on-one for a living wage. It's important work that would give people legitimate, earned pride -- not, as conservatives like to say, "participation trophies."
Who but government will do that work, Ross? If not *that* work, if not *that* path to dignity, *what* path, Ross?
4
The fundamental question is this: Is a meritocracy (if that merit is purely genetic) any more fair than an aristocracy?
I liked George Bush, but I'm not nostalgic for the system that produced him. I think the old "aristocrats" were right to recycle their authority into something more diverse and flexible.
I agree with the critique of meritocracy, but it makes more sense when you frame it by incentives. When the rewards for merit are money and social dominance, that distorts the definition of "merit" in pretty obvious ways, given human nature.
So perhaps the real problem is a matter of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Do we really miss an old system of inherited political and cultural leadership? Or is it simply good, morally focused parenting, and education based on responsibility and rules rather than cutthroat striving?
3
Mr. Douthat, this piece is a hodgepodge mess of thoughts that ring hollow in your effort to defend you prior article. Perhaps unbridled meritocracy is not the best model moving forward, but your arguments in favor of a diversified aristocracy of elites falls flat. You argue that meritocracy segregates talent rather than disperses it. That is not a product of meritocracy, it’s a result of a segment of the meritocracy deciding to isolate itself in order to be among only those of similar background. How is that different than the WASP (and wannabe WASPs) who similarly segregated themselves? It would have been rare for part of the old WASP generation to live anywhere other than one of the bastions of their group. While too many meritricians live among only the their own, you’ll find far more of them living among the less blessed than those of the WASP class. The current vision of meritocracy is less than perfect, but it’s better than the MAGA- concept our current president wants to bring us back to. In my opinion, your article is one of random thoughts with little or no substantiation that just doesn’t cut it - at least for me.
13
@JDR: one thing Mr Douthat left out of his article: in a true meritocracy, there should be efforts to have equal opportunities for all. In the current US model, opportunities largely depend upon how rich one’s parents are, and how many of their resources they choose to give to their children.
Consider things such as unpaid internships and the top colleges. These purport to be available to all - but present barriers to all but the children of the elite. Yet, the conceit of a system calling itself a meritocracy is that one rises solely on one’s merit.
The current system is a hierarchy in which those with money feel superior to those lacking such resources. They clamor for more tax cuts for themselves, and refuse to help anyone other than themselves and their offspring. To me, this sounds like the old WASP hierarchy. Check put the WASP elite’s resistance to FDR’s New Deal - sounds a lot like what Mr Douthat ascribed to today’s so-called meritocrats.
2
Maybe some sense of loyalty can temper the "ruthless solipsism" that Douthat identifies. Thomas Franks says “There is no solidarity in a meritocracy”.
The working class believe in solidarity and loyalty; the professional/managerial class believe in meritocracy; and the rich believe in neither. Money/power are their only guiding light.
We need loyalty to values and institutions to temper our meritocracy, and some measure of merit to earn that loyalty. Otherwise, we are at the mercy of the rich.
10
@rls > We need loyalty to values and institutions to temper our meritocracy, and some measure of merit to earn that loyalty. <
True, and we also need a society that's willing to notice when some measure of loyalty *has* been earned, instead of simply taking it as axiomatic that *nobody's* any good, and *everyone's* motivations are corrupt.
It's been a long journey to Donald J. Trump's virulent and contagious nihilism. We got on this road around the time Bob Dylan sang: "It's easy to see without looking too far / That not much is really sacred."
1
The president's cabinet's represents today's aristocracy / most monied class. We see where that is getting the country as a whole. Serving someone other than oneself seems a goal too lofty to expect from present leadership on either side of the aisle.
8
White Americans are born on first base. We all have at least a chance to run the bases and score. Many of us may not but we all have the opportunity.
Black Americans are born in the batters box with Justin Verlander pitching and an all-star defense on the field, and need to get a hit before they can even start to play the game. That’s the racial difference in this country.
18
@Luke. That is true for some but not all Black Americans. Sadly, for those that are in the batters box, it has been so for generations since The Great Society which has been a bitter failure for them. It provided only handouts with no real method of fostering an ability to climb up.
@Luke in today's America white males are in the on-deck circle
I am not sure how to react to this, but, Ross is onto something. I was at a party the other evening. Everyone I talked with had kids who went to private, first rate, schools. Everybody was in good shape economically. The bar tender was in medical school. There was some racial diversity. What tied it all together was that successful people knew successful people. And, their kids were quite likely to be successful and marry other successful people. The kids were clustering in the big cities, NY, Boston, Chicago, SF, and Atlanta. In the old days, blue bloods married blue bloods. Today, economically successful folks marry economically successful folks. That does not mean that someone has done something wrong. But, it means we will have an ever more divided country by education, employment, and wealth. This new group needs to understand that whether they got to the top because of skill, connections, education, marriage, or, all of the above, they have great obligations to the rest of the those who were not so blessed.
25
@Robert
"Today, economically successful folks marry economically successful folks."
OK, let's put this in some perspective....
People generally socialize with peers who have similar interests, cultural backgrounds, economic means, etc. People who go to a club like Prince's First Avenue (in Minneapolis) will in general share more commonalities versus comparing them to people who hang out at the Chatterbox Cafe (in Lake Wobegon), or even at a corner bar in a Black neighborhood north of Mpls. So chances are, they will end up marrying someone of similar economic class.
But that in and of itself doesn't imply some sort of evil segregation, meritocracy, etc.; other factors are involved (including comfort with one's peers).
A was raised on Long Island in an upper-middleclass family, but lived in Mpls for 10 years. There, I married someone who grew up in rural MN (adjacent to Lake Wobegon). My family was "richer" than his; but he made more money than I did (and he still does). All my siblings went to college; few of his did. But some of his siblings make as much as mine do. We all enjoy being together at holidays; but we wouldn't hang out at the same bars.
I think that my life's experiences show the folly of this whole discussion of elitism, meritocracy, aristocracy, etc. Those labels aren't real, because peopl's live are multifaceted, and don't fit into tidy (confining) boxes. Formulating sweeping generalizations about such things really doesn't match reality.
3
@Robert Evolutionary biologists have a charming term for this: assortative mating.
If there is any genetic component to success at all, a meritocratic society, with late marriage, with marriage-partners selected after stratification, is going to produce wider spread of genetic success-ability than before.
It's hard to see how this won't become a social problem...
It’s time to be more nuanced about meritocracy before we toss it onto the growing bonfire of American institutions that helped this country succeed. The only problem with the meritocracy is we haven’t put in place the means of making this pathway open to more people across our society. And that starts with education: better schools and more access to university.
Now where is the opposition to the sort of policies that would make access to the meritocracy coming from? It’s not from the folks emerging from the meritocracy. It’s from the resentful GOP which continues to press misguided economic and social policies that hinder access.
So enough please with the meritocracy bashing.
7
"Diversity, despite what many liberals want to think, does not provide a solution to this problem." Truer words have not lately been written. In academics and certain political circles today, an obsession with diversity has turned bad. We care about our proposed *solutions* (affirmative hiring, admissions, etc.), justify them based on no evidence that they ameliorate the *problem* (legacy disadvantage, broader opportunity, social injustices), cite the value of diversity to team decision making and classroom discussions in some disciplines, and then protect them by attacking opposition as "hate speech." Many people recognize and care about the problems of racial and gender inequality but also recognize that no solution heretofore put forward has shown any ability to solve the problem - and we recognize that those who claim to be open-minded, compassionate, and thoughtful about these matters have become the personifications of close-minded dogmatic bullies. Any idea but ours is ignorant and hateful and should be banned. Thank you for some gentle prodding for reconsideration of values, "merit," and openness.
17
This article gets two very important things wrong. The second is most important.
1. It tells stories but repeatedly fails to recognize the difference between association and causation
2. By definition, meritocracy is not limited or defined by those who were born on third base. Yes, some people born on third base are very capable. Meritocracy means that those born in the batters box have an equal chance if they can hit.
Just because some folks born on first base believe that they got their on their merits doesn’t make it so. The fault lies with our self-image and insight and is not a reflection of the system. We have never had a true meritocracy in this country. Recent trend towards lower levels of economic mobility suggest that we may be moving farther away from one (though this is complicated and worthy of much greater discussion).
I do agree that some norms of behavior are required for a society to function well. These need to be taught, either at home when the tradition exists there, or in school for those for whom it doesn’t. In recent times, hose who have achieved success have overseen a devaluation of education for our citizenry. This is not bringing us any closer to the meritocracy we all deserve
20
Ross raises interesting issues of culture. But I think at the core, he is addressing social responsibility. That "noblese oblige" that we now miss from the likes of GHWB is lovely. But along with it came a iron grip on wealth and a limited desire to share.
The use of terms like "WASP" is fraught with misinterpretation. But hey, it got this chat going. I grew up in what I thought everyone acknowledged was a White Anglo Saxon Protestant family. But we had minimal resources and our "oblige" was to struggle a bit to keep food on the table and sending the kids to college meant serious financial sacrifice. So, let's be careful with terms.
The logical extension of Ross's articles could be the lack of cultural training that accompanies our headlong charge into a world dominated by technologies we love to use. Just as there has been no real established cell phone etiquette, there has been very little social training or sense of obligation of the newly rich entrepreneurs who dominate the economy now.
Compare the values of Buffet and Gates with those of Zuckerberg and Musk.
The slippery world of silicon is moving faster than our ability to establish social norms that serve the majority of humans. An unfettered uber industrialization with minimal regulation has placed us on a bullet train to oblivion.
Would returning to "WASP control" be for the better? I doubt it.
We need a national dialog about ethics, civics and a tradition of inclusion. This train is out of control.
18
Douthat misses one of the primary reasons for the current divisions in our country, and as he would see it, the failure of meritocracy: the elimination of the draft. When you serve along side fellow Americans from every walk of life, you can’t help but develop a greater appreciation for others, learn humility, and the value of your team. Donald Trump and his ilk would be far better people if they had had to serve.
20
@J. Yes, and widespread national service would be the best reasonable substitute. It could even be voluntary in the short term. We have tens of millions of people who haven't yet been trained out of an idealistic desire to serve their communities and their country. They come from all walks of life. (And aren't just young people.) If they started meeting each other in common purpose, it would go a long way towards reversing the spiral of hatred and contempt we have entered.
2
@J. Remember.....trump was called up to serve and defend our country....he ran the other way like the coward that he is.... Nothing could make him a better person....except to serve time for his crimes.
We need a way to prevent the establishment of a new aristocracy of those who succeed based on merit and are diversity.
Diversity is a trait that is relatively easy to define and support.
Merit is achieved by making every generation start on a more equal footing with (1) an income tax which reduces the inequalities of the present system; (2) an inheritance tax, after charitable deductions, high enough to prevent successive generations to inherit, not earn, their privilege; and (3) free college education and other appropriate subsidies to qualified persons who lack the means to realize their potential - not huge, bankruptcy-proof student loans.
9
Thinking about the large inheritance tax suggested, I wonder if that wouldn't just encourage high net worth people to spend it all, not just on charity, but conspicuous consumption. That might be good for the economy, but what about the soul?
3
Is this a convoluted way of saying that meritocracy without moral values is no better than aristocracy without moral values?
The Bush funeral eulogies emphasized, as funeral eulogies should, the best qualities of the deceased. It was instructive that this scion of wealthy, connected parents was lauded for integrity, loyalty, and the military trio of values: duty, honor, and country. These are not values owned by the patrician WASPs. They are the values of Western Enlightenment.
Meritocracy does not per se exclude those values anymore than aristocracy per se includes them.
14
@Rita Great response Rita.
It just seems strange — or inconsistent with reality — to vilify diversity and portray it as some sort of new world order in a country where Donald Trump is president, Congress is (until January) Republican controlled and unlikely to make a huge turn to the left and the Supreme Court and lower branches of the judiciary are stocked with conservatives who have lifetime appointments.
There is no new Leftist new world order shaping America. Instead, a huge accumulation of Conservative power has occurred and that has led to a re-interpretation of America’s history and values. As a result, immigration, Medicare and Medicaid, SNAP, publicly funded education and other programs have become examples of raging liberalism, instead of components of a social contract with citizens or examples of America’s founding values and commitment to liberty.
9
It is important to separate a meritocracy in fields requiring high levels of competency from a political meritocracy. Fields that are not heavily dependent on human relations, like mathematics, scientific research (excluding hunting for funding), artistic expression a meritocracy is inevitable, talent is not evenly distributed. Politics is something different altogether, it requires input from all levels of society and for a democracy to function all classes must be represented,not just at the voting booth but in positions of power. Douthat has the right diagnosis in that power is too concentrated in a small class but he points the finger at the wrong elite. It is not an intellectual elite that has too much influence but rather a wealthy elite that has been using its wealth to push for policies that benefit it. The Republican party has become the servant of that elite while using prejudice, the fear of social change and religiosity to get enough voters to stay in power. It is to be expected that the highly educated will push hard to ensure their children will be highly educated as well but that is not what creates an aristocracy. Rather inherited wealth and neglecting the education of the poor will do so.
8
There is something to be said for “noblesse oblige” and “to whom much is given, much is expected.” Neither seem to be the ethos of the current so-called ruling class, who are out for whatever they can get with a bit of fashionable virtue signaling along the way. People who lead corporations and are elected to office ought to have the common good in mind, including that of the poor and middle class, and not merely profit. If they don’t, they don’t deserve their positions.
12
Mr. Douthat, Florence King would take vigorous and vitriolic exception to your definition of WASP, as do I. WASP is a state of mind that transcends American regions and reaches down into the middle class. I also wonder about the hinted animus against Masonry expressed in the last column. Freemasonry is universal and egalitarian in spirit. As Theodore Roosevelt said, the Masonic lodge was the only place where he addressed his gardener as Worshipful and needed his permission to speak.
5
Mr. Douthat,
This 'straw-man' column solidifies my problem with your previous one. You incorrectly attribute our mid-twentieth century successes with the WASP's Noblesse Oblige; however, their noblesse stemmed from their fair share of the American Pie rather than their mere metacognition.
Back in 'the good old days' the top earners were taxed according to their merit not their political clout. This allowed for better infrastructure and education, for more social and economic mobility (for white men, at least). Finally, because of far greater inheritance taxes, far fewer were born like #45 into great wealth or a member of the Wal-Mart or Koch families who are born into obscene wealth.
Your party, your ideology confuse meritocracy for oligarchy. Today's elite has as much in common with the American populace as seventeenth century monarchs did with serfs.
If you want true meritocracy, do away with inheritance completely and without loopholes; stop allowing local taxes to fund local schools, guarantee healthcare for all, an excellent free education for all (which would be easier if private schools did not exist or were taxed into meritocratic submission), etc, .. Essentially, everything your party is diametrically opposed to.
16
It's distorting to talk about past and present elites if we ignore how inequalities have widened. Whether through birth or achievement, if you make it into the elite now, the advantages over non-elites are FAR more than they used to be.
Being elite today entails different things. Yes, you have more money and influence. But perhaps more meaningfully you have the things most middle-class and even working-class folks used to have and no longer do: decent job security, public education that works, access to higher education that doesn't require massive debt, a reasonable hope that your children will enjoy opportunity and security.
11
Both of these words are simply speaking, origin myths - rule by the "best born" or "most qualified". As such, they are nothing more than attempts at justification for ones position, be it fame, money, power, etc. I intuitively see a society that values and rewards hard work as a more open and democratic one, but this is a likely due to the accident of my birth - white, middle class born in the US in the 1950's - than to any basic truth. The term meritocracy can and has been used to defend social and economic conditions that make individual achievement almost impossible. In addition, it is quite evident that a generation or two of meritocracy results in much the same nepotism, incompetence and corruption (yes, I am referring to almost everyone who occupies a role in the Trump administration) as an Aristocracy. In the end, a much more valuable tool for explaining the current crisis in our country comes from an old Aristocrat, "power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely".
2
Perhaps the most significant change in the history of Western culture was the GI Bill of 1945. It allowed people of ability, no matter their roots, to gain the tools needed to succeed. Surely, before then, royalty had brilliance as well as ineptness, but were shielded by...being royal. The brightest of the peasant and working class were unable to break through. The GI BIll dramatically changed the demographics of the USA
On a personal level, in my 76 years of observing our planet, I can think of only one slice of time when I didn't experience either overt or subtle anti-semitism. And that was when I served as an officer and a gentleman in the US Navy. Here was my first exposure to meritocracy and I wish your article had mentioned our military, because that is a shining example of meritocracy.
16
The problem with the “meritocracy” is the assumption that it is based on some kind of objective criteria for what is meritorious, when it’s really based on whatever the elites have decided it should be. The upper class is a club. The club’s rules for entry are always written by its members.
10
I disagree with much of what Ross writes, but he does identify what is one of the most difficult and destructive trends in our society today: the segregation of talent and high achieving individuals along the coasts.
As a small-town Rust Belt-er who earned his way into Yale, I remember an old professor once quipping that when people from the Midwest used to go to Yale, they would finish their studies on the east coast and then go back to from where they came. These "high achievers" or WASPs or whatever label you want to affix to them, became the mayors, lawyers, doctors, corporate heads, or more often than not, the benefactors of an amazing array of cultural institutions. It's incredible that cities like Toledo, Springfield, or Dayton have world class art museums, opera houses, and architecture. Unfortunately, they are all a legacy of a different time and it's impossible to imagine how a similar wave of investment in the arts and culture could happen now, as not only people, but also wealth, have left these cities through globalization and corporate amalgamation.
6
@Ryan
I don't agree with what you've said.
I did the converse of what you did: I was raised in an upper-middleclass family on Long Island. I went to an elite college in Mass. Then I moved to Minnesota for my doctorate, and lived there for 10 years. I taught for a year at a college in rural Missouri. Now I live in one of the most rural counties in NY.
Growing up and being schooled on the East Coast, I was raised to believe that culture and chances for "success" ended at the Hudson. But moving to the Midwest proved that wrong.
I found cities with great arts and cultural opportunities. Even better: They're more affordable than in the east; and more accessible for an emerging artist to establish themselves.
And it's not just in arts/culture; important and innovative businesses like the Mayo Clinic, 3M, John Deere, Pella Windows, Garmin, etc.
And now that I live in rural upstate NY, I likewise know that creative/innovative people live everywhere; perhaps not as "famous" as in coastal cities, but equally as tallented/innovative and impactful. What's more, "successful" people up here contribute to local institutions as much (proportionally) as in large coastal cities: Giving $50,000 to a regional theater company or endowing a scholarship for a college is just as important and impactful as being a benefactor of the Met.
There are lots of talented "high-achieving" people who live off the coasts; you just have to remember that achievement and fame are two different things.
6
Once again, Ross drifts into specious side issues to defend unsupportable ideas. His argument seems to be based on the (valid) observation that meritocracy turns into aristocracy, a wordy version of friends helping friends. He ignores the other fact that both forms of elitism are anti-democratic. Both concentrate all wealth and power in the hands of a few and let the others fall by the wayside, like Ayn Rand's people of limited ability. A diverse elite is still an elite, and laws that protect those at the top, like the recent "tax cut", necessarily do harm to those on lower rungs of the ladder. Although the WASPs "knew who and what they were," they refused to respect those who made their lives possible. the men and women whose labor gave value to the stocks they traded like baseball cards. Today's "meritocracy" is no different.
23
@richuz
Great first line. And post.
2
You can't have an aristocracy without a unified culture--something we certainly don't have today. Even when I was young we accepted without thinking that American history was a natural offshoot of English history, its political traditions, literature, a conviction of cultural superiority with its inevitable responsibilities and burdens. Today we're struggling to find some way to accommodate millions of people in our society who don't necessarily share our cultural and political traditions, and pretend that they 'fit in'. Deny it if you like, but in some 3rd or 4th sub-basement of our cultural subconscious, we don't want them and wish they'd leave. Supposing they won't, we'll just have to wait for a new cultural unity to jell and see what sort of aristocracy it produces. What will it be like? In a fast changing world-technological and economic environment it may well value mostly inherited quick acting native intelligence--not good news for the average Joe. At what point will this separation between the bright and less bright translate into differences in political rights? Well, doesn't that open a can of worms!
3
@Ronald B. Duke - Who exactly are these "we" and they"?
I am the 80 year old grandchild of immigrant Eastern European Jews. Am I "we" or "they"?
@Len Charlap; I suppose the test is negative--to be a card-carrying 'we' you have to never have asked yourself the question. To a 'we' the unexamined life is the only one worth living.
Let us clarify one more time...The current president entered Univ of Pennsylvania as a transfer student, he took some undergraduate classes in business and graduated with a degree from UPenn. It is widely reported that he was an ordinary student and did not achieve any level of distinction in his program of study.
15
@Nancy Connors - Yeah, he got an undergraduate degree, not an MBA, from Wharton. When I taught at Penn, there was a world of difference between students in the College of Men and the College of Women and undergraduates in Wharton. The football team were almost entirely Wharton students.
2
Don't forget about the Brahmins.
And this is good old Boston,
the home of the bean and the cod,
where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots
And the Cabots talk only to God.
11
The children of the highest achievers go to the best schools and are groomed to succeed, so meritocracy is limited as the children of the less off have much narrower opportunities. At least the old aristocracy knew in their bones the luck they had been born to. The new smugly and arrogantly think it is all their own doing--or mostly. Until we think communially ---which does not mean socialistically---huge numbers of our people will be excluded from the good life, huge numbers will not be able to exercise but a small faction of their potential.
8
There was a WASP culture, but not all WASPs were wealthy. The poor but proud WASP also had a sense of duty and a religion, although it was not typically high church. In fact, I would say that Episcopalians were on the edge of Protestantism as I understand it. It was an upper class affectation that mitigated WASPiness.
Those WASPs thought it was unseemly to think too well of yourself. There was some sense of danger in being too proud of your children, a kind of tempting God if you cared too much for them. Better to be rigorous in what you expected from your offspring and not spoil them with praise and treats.
They believed in hard work as both an obligation and a virtue. It was important to live within your means. Conspicuous consumption was distasteful, even if you could afford it.
There was room for merit in that system, so I think that the aristocratic WASPs got their status from wealth rather from WASPiness. And like the wealthy today, they were good at passing on their privilege to their offspring.
3
America is still far from being a true meritocracy, so we needn't worry about that ruining it. WASP male leaders have been diminished because they and others like them failed to address the needs of others unlike them. They allowed African Americans to live in an American version of apartheid, with unequal opportunities and education that persist today. They forced women to risk death to have an abortion. They oversaw the enshrinement of a health care system that put profit before public health, portraying attempts to broaden access to health care as dangerous socialism. They allowed lower income people to be starved of opportunities diminished by public schools so poor some can't even spell their pro-Trump signs correctly. They peopled a legal system which gave them more protection than other groups. They presided over governments in which they enjoyed full democratic rights while others were less enfranchised. We are living a country which their leadership created. Perhaps when America has a true meritocracy, we can dismantle the legacy they left behind.
13
A basic fallacy in our society is that some people deserve to have mansions and some deserve to live in sewers.
Everything is luck. Some people are smarter and more disciplined, some are less smart, and lazy. But any American of great power and wealth, is very, very, lucky.
Nobody, not Beyonce or Bill Gates, "deserves", as our social narrative would have it, to be a million times more wealthy than anyone else. Nobody is that much more valuable or talented. They are incredibly lucky.
The luck of being born into human life, and in America. The luck of family, race, gender, nationality, talent, beauty, health, intelligence and doors opening at the right time.
If there was an aristocracy of the "best" people among us, they would dissolve their wealth and share it. An ethical aristocracy would have the humility to recognize their luck and use their advantages to end suffering. That is the measure of enlightenment, not a Yale degree, high test scores, or a brahmin background.
The pomp and flattery at the death of a single, very lucky, man, with a very lucky family, showed us to have the opposite of an ethical aristocracy. Those at the top of the heap have always taken care of themselves, and left the rest of humanity the breadcrumbs from their feast.
We shouldn't have to praise them for it.
21
While the aristocrat and the meritocrat may have worked hard for their achievements, at least the former admits to having started with advantages that most of the population do not have.
5
Virtue is an independent variable. It is independent of social standing, wealth, IQ, and any other characteristic one can think of. The poor are not more virtuous than the rich and those who ace the SAT are not, on average, any kinder than those who can't find Poland on a map. My hierarchy of values, however, puts ignorance at the bottom. We are living in a society that no longer values knowledge.
7
I am not sure I understand Ross’s point. Societies evolve and those with power and privilege change over time. WASPs were in, now they are out. Populists (in the form of white men) burst forth in 1994 and probably reached their peak with Trump’s election in 2016. Changing demographics and the moral and ethical codes of millennials and Gen-Xers will bring another change of the guard. The combination of the #MeToo movement and recent House elections may indicate the beginnings of this shift.
Old Money means little today; those who know how to access, organize and manipulate huge volumes of data quickly will be the new WASPs of the 21st century.
1
Many commentators have pointed out that American society is far from a meritocracy--even Douthat seems to concede that point. But what flummoxes me about his argument is what about the former WASP aristocracy merits any admiration or nostalgia whatsoever. What did the working masses ever get from their alleged noblesse oblige? A bloody civil war because the southern gentry couldn't imagine their chivalric lives without slaves? The brutal suppression of the labor movement? A great depression and bitter opposition to the traitor-to-his-class Roosevelt's New Deal? The Dulles brothers subverting American foreign policy to the needs of their corporate clients? Maybe a few voluntary hospitals instead of universal health insurance. Aristocracies are never good, hereditary aristocracies least of all.
14
Douthat wants to criticize our so-called “meritocracy.” But if “the typical meritocrat is born on third base, hustles home, and gets praised as if he just hit a grand slam," as he says, then it is not a meritocracy. Meritocracy is not achieved when a few “African-Americans and Jews and Catholics (like myself) and women” are represented among all the WASP faces.
Meriticracy will be achieved when equal opportunity for K-12 children is achieved. We are nowhere close. Contrary to our national self-image, in measurements of economic and social mobility of children, the U.S. falls well below other developed countries. This means that a child’s hard work and ability is less of a factor in her future success than who her parents are or what neighborhood she grows up in. This failure starts with our uneven commitment to education, with average spending per pupil varying by a factory of 2 across the states and by a factor of five or more within some states.
There will be no meritocracy until we accept the fact that the United States does not offer its children equal opportunity or anything close to it.
We can move in that direction by ensuring that two young Einsteins born on the opposite sides of the tracks experience the same educational opportunity from the first day of kindergarten until they graduate from high school. No amount of affirmative action in college admissions or need-based college financial aid can reverse 12 years of educational neglect.
10
@Norwester There will never be a true “meritocracy” That’s the point of the article. There will always be a class of people with an unfair advantage. That’s life. The point is: society is better if those people are (at the very least) self-conscious about their advantage.
2
So basically, the choice is between modeling society on either the Catholicism's City of God hierarchy/aristocracy; or Protestantisms opportunistic Work Ethic/meritocracy.
Surely there's a third way(?)
1
The concepts of diversity and meritocracy are quaint fantasies. Leadership and power are claimed by ambition and battle. Even within subgroups that share cultural characteristics, that's the case. Meritocracies purport to use objective standards to distinguish between the talented and those without talent, but human experience demonstrates that the human talent pool is broad and deep, and (with the rare exceptions at each end of the curve) distinctions between the "talented" and everyone else are virtually meaningless. Diversity is just another weapon in the battle, but ultimately those who obtain power typically want to maintain power for themselves, their family and their friends, and it likely doesn't matter whether they are WASPs or otherwise. And the people wielding "diversity" and "meritocracy" as weapons in the fight for power are no different, they just use "diversity" and "meritocracy" instead of "loyalty" and "judgment" as their conceptual organizing dogma to rally their troops. All of which seems to be the point of these essays. For those of us who will never obtain power, the question is how best to constrain the drive that those who obtain power have to secure it for themselves and those they privilege, whether because they identify as WASPs, Harvard alums or members of the Southern Baptist Church.
2
The WASPs gave up with the election of Bill Clinton. Defeated by a fast-talking nouveau with loose morals, all confidence was lost. Indeed, both the Republican and the Democratic establishment allowed idealism to be replaced with raw political expediency. Hence the Lewinsky debacle, Gore’s loss, and the ensuing lost decades. This country sorely needs idealistic, service-oriented leaders. This is what is nostalgic about Bush. Let’s start criticizing both parties for their failure on this front. Enough saying the other party is worse; they are both unmoored. We need to recognize that this macro failure is worse than the election of Trump. Enough self-righteousness. Take responsibility. Stop saying, “but they’re worse” or “they started it.” The Boomer generation of leaders blame and obfuscate. We crave “the buck stops here,” and that is neither Hillary nor Donald. Congressional term limits are the logical starting place. Politics should be a road to service, not a profit-centered career.
6
Besides term limits, another way to at least "make a little room" for genuine innovative responsibility takers is with Instant Runoff elections.
Trump has made me an elitist again. Both FDR and Barack Obama are fine examples of the excellence we can aspire to in the name of all men and women.
If we cannot return to the better angels of our nature, can we at least return to our better manners?
8
With the loss of Hillary Clinton, I had one condolence. I would not have to listen to Larry Summers pontificate as either the Secretary of the Treasury or the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. After all, this is the "little man" who opined that all those blue collar American workers didn't deserve the wages that they earned.
Donald Trump should for the rest of his life send Holiday Greeting cards of salutations and thanks to the likes of Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and the Clintons. He would never have achieved the Presidency without them.
2
@Rick
So true. I will never forget that it was Larry Summers who argued it was oh so necessary to trash the contracts of blue-collar autoworkers but then later said that AIG executives and white-collar workers should receive the whole of their bonuses because "There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts."
I voted for Clinton but her tie to Larry Summers and her acceptance of such attitudes were two of the reasons I did so while holding my nose and pinching really, really hard.
1
So much air here and so little substance. If you are going to claim the huge benefit of a WASP cabal of a deeply ethical and civic minded elite, the least one could do is name enough names to flesh out the story. Who were these people that held up a civic minded power structure that protected America from the scourges of greed and self interest?
Douthat always speaks of the lost morality imposed by the modern forces of secularism in the haze of a nostalgia based on faulty memory and historical ignorance. This security blanket is so full of holes that even a passive interest the true history of America should render it laughable.
The railroad barrens cheated, broke laws and bribed politicians. Standard Oil obtained its monopoly through more subtle but similarly amoral tactics that included the bribery of politicians whenever necessary
The gilded age contained as much or more greed based amorality as our present one by any unbiased assessment. although any accurate comparison that attributes causation to cultural change is impossible.
Greed and amorality has never gone out of fashion, but there are always men and women of genuine high morality in this American stew- reformers, journalists and high minded public servants- some of them WASPS answering the call of our better angels. There is a percentage of heroes in every ethnic and cultural group- from protestants to atheists.
9
I believe you are mistaken in the belief that the meritocracy doesn't know who or what it is or what it is doing. From Gates and Buffett to silicon valley to the rising Asian elites that are overrepresented by a factor of 4 at all top schools. You're right about geographic concentration but with the internet it's not clear how much geography matters now. If we didn't have Fox news probably not very much. Your problem maybe one of recognition. The ideals of the meritocracy are still forming as it is relatively young, having mostly formed between 1985 and now. Just getting into its second generation. Not much to criticize yet compared to hereditary wasp culture. Once the meritocracy cures the problem of inadequate access to first generation college goers, it will truly prove itself vastly superior. Don't subconsciously blame Trump on them. That's like blaming the sexual assault victim for what they were wearing.
2
I had to come to the comment section to see if anyone understood what Mr Douthat is trying to say. Obviously (?) he’s not espousing some racial test. Is he talking old money vs. new money? No, it seems he just doesn’t like an education that doesn’t include some instruction on the responsibilities that go along with privilege. If he wants to call that aristocratic fine, but saying “meritocrats are often educated to be bad leaders”... Is that all you got? There are bad leaders (Trump). And there are good leaders, as the longing for a leader like the late Pres. show, even his opposition misses him now. Or President Obama. Other than that I’m still not sure what you’re trying to say. And really, the Catholics???
4
His question is:
Group A: leaders from a process where they are obviously born into the position. In most cases, they receive reinforcement from birth on what previous generations gave them and what they must leave following generations.
Group B: leaders that like the Group A had original ancestors that obtained resources via some individual noteworthy achievement, but now, also like Group A, rely on inherited positions from those ancestors. Group B, though, also works in a process via access to education and competitive promotions, and believes it achieves position by merit. Group B is more diverse by creed, race, gender, but may be as uniform as Group A in outlook, but with different ideas.
Is Group B an improvement over Group A? Did Group B lose any worthwhile traits of Group A?
1
Your mistake, Mr. Douthat, is to link character traits with skin color.
In trying to be provocative you you confused yourself. The simple fact is that we have lost a former level of interpersonal conduct centered on civility and politeness.
For example, Trump supporters (for reasons that escape me) spin Trump's rudeness, aggression, and dishonesty as "telling it like it is." Mt. Trump may doing a lot of things but a President who has lied more than 7,000 times during his brief tenure in office but "telling it like it is" is not one of them.
Another characteristic praised by Trump's supporters is that he is a "fighter." True enough, Trump is a fighter but really more in the spirit of the WWE - faux fighting for the sake of entertainment. Trump is certainly not fighting for anything (especially not the 'forgotten men and women of this country'). Trump is fighting for Trump. He is fighting in a misbegotten belief that it shows he is "tough and in charge." In reality, it just shows he is a frightened, insecure, out-of-control joke.
I appreciate the article. We do need a return to civility.
Sadly, the country will not progress until the demon of Trump is exorcised. Perhaps then we can all reflect on what an awful experiment that was. The first order of business is damage control followed by accountability.
7
From the protection racketeers of Nottingham to the galtons of Birmingham when power started coming out of the barrel of a blunderbus to when the sun never set to Breton woods, to Pickettys lament, the noblesse could easily oblige with crumbs while jealously guarding their gains at all costs. True generosity comes when one can share what little one has and not care who they share it with. That is really the grace and dignity that counts. It matters little if a person is smart or not. But are they generous?
1
The passing of George H.W. Bush and the orgy of revisionism which accompanied it led to an almost audible sigh of Republican relief that dispassionate, objective analysis will occasionally fall prey to carefully orchestrated p.r. spin. 'Twas ever thus.
2
The richest president in United States history was (and still is) George Washington. This country was founded by, and its Constitution written by, a clique of rich, white Protestants; 12 of our first 14 Presidents were also slaveowners. The stench of meritocracy (that evolved into corporatism rather than democracy) is in the DNA of our very Constitution. If Mr. Douthat doesn't think that at the core of this so-called democracy is the WASP-rule of money and corporations, their interests advanced by battalions of lobbyists, then he's either naive or willfully in denial.
1
@Mike7
"If Mr. Douthat doesn't think that at the core of this so-called democracy is the WASP-rule of money and corporations, their interests advanced by battalions of lobbyists, then he's either naive or willfully in denial."
Would you be OK with the above redacted of only the word 'WASP' viz.
If Mr. Douthat doesn't think that at the core of this so-called democracy is the rule of money and corporations, their interests advanced by battalions of lobbyists, then he's ..................?
" if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile"
Really Ross! Because the "Catholic aristocracy" has worked out so well for the Catholic Church.
6
"On the evidence we have, the meritocratic ideal ends up being just as undemocratic as the old emphasis on inheritance and tradition, and it forges an elite that has an aristocracy’s vices (privilege, insularity, arrogance) without the sense of duty, self-restraint and noblesse oblige that WASPs at their best displayed."
When you use Facebook's creepy Sandburg as the evidence for this claim it might make sense. But when you dip into the real world -- meritocracy in the trenches -- the claim falls apart. Teachers, police officers, retail sales, medicine, small business owners -- that's where American meritocracy plants the non-aristocratic, everyday, five day work week seed. The WASPY "noblesse oblige" is not absent from the streets; it's just not manifested in that Poppy Bush I-am-giving-millions-I-did-not-earn away shctick that gets libraries named after them. Poor people who work their way up give back. Facebook's Sandburg should not be the poster child to thrash meritocracy in favor of WASP aristocracy. Get out there and find some people on the streets who are doing good.
3
As a conservative WASP who grew up in the NY metro area, I loved your article. I share your concerns for the meritocracy, which can be all too easily easily socially engineered when too many smart asian kids start overcrowding Harvard.
Unfortunately, I forwarded your piece to my family and friends, most of whom are pious limousine liberals. I'm afraid they will be on your front lawn with pitchforks, burning Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." Sorry.
2
There's a number of terms in this article that are not defined. That's a pity. It means that the entire article is a mystery. Let's see: was Henry Ford an aristocrat or a meritocrat?? What about the Vanderbilts? Their origins were modest, but they quickly made their fortunes. I think what Ross wants to talk about is plutocracy. The only genes that are in any way relevant in the US are those whose pockets are full (if you're white).
Ross is arguing with a straw man. He is attributing qualities to the WASPs they didn’t really have and similarly attributing qualities to his claimed replacements for the WASPs which are not there either. And finally he is being amazingly provincial, thinking that the Ivies are taking the cream of the crop from everywhere else in the country. They aren’t and they can’t. Let’s just take the example of California for illustrration. Does Ross seriously argue that the Ivies even put a faint smudge mark on the surface of our 40 million strong talent pool? Maybe it got him a Twitter trend; he’s welcome to that. But all of this is a straw man argument.
1
"...meritocrats are often educated to be bad leaders, and bad people, in a very specific way — a way of arrogant intelligence unmoored from historical experience, ambition untempered by self-sacrifice. The way of the “best and the brightest” at the dawn of the technocratic era and the “smartest guys in the room” decades later, the way of the arsonists of late-2000s Wall Street and the “move fast and break things” culture of Silicon Valley."
Brilliant! I love it!
The fundamental problem with this opinion is that in its definition of meritocracy and the assumption that its current manifestations (e.g. segregation of talent to the rich cities) are an inevitable result. No one can deny that there are members of today's elite (Mr Zuckerberg for one) with questionable ethics. That same applies to WASPs of yesteryear. To measure the worst or even the average of today's elite with the best of WASPs (the author's own choice of words) is misguided and unfair. If people care to look more closely at today's "aristocracy", one would similarly find many with noblesse oblige equal to that of the best of the WASPs. Co-opting Barack Obama into the definition of WASP (White?) is certainly the most disingenuous statement in the whole article.
1
I guess like fish may not realise they are in water separate from air and earth, white privilege may not be appreciated by those standing in it.
As with Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs - as soon as a lower level need is satisfied, the next level becomes our urgent pressing 'need' - so once starvation survival and social needs have been satisfied, leaving a legacy may be uppermost - as Bill Gates who has been the richest person on Earth now seeks to solve world health problems by promoting toilets in India.
I grew up white upper middle class with a doctor father and wondered why adults accorded me undue respect 'ah you're the Doctor's Son !' I didn't know any different.
Meritocrats tend to Aristocrats ? I suspect the basic egotistic gene - if you're not talking about me I'm not interested in listening to you - but enough about me, tell me what you think - about me ... !?
Accumulation of wealth can be posed as caring for one's family and grandchildren. Family-centric cultures like China have worked that way for centuries. Get what you can from others - to give charity to your 'family'.
Douthat’s back-pedaling results in some vague and unsubstantiated statements. “Second, the meritocratic elite inevitably tends back toward aristocracy, because any definition of “merit” you choose will be easier for the children of these self-segregated meritocrats to achieve.” How using a “definition” of “merit” that precludes legacies. Three quarters of the 100 ranked U.S. universities factor legacy into admissions and about a third of Harvard students had a relative attend. Moreover, the alleged dismantling of the elite university system did not translate to a meritocracy because elementary and high schools became increasingly segregated under WASP leadership.
Perhaps I may point out that in the two columns, Mr. Douthat wasn't asserting the disappearance of one solidly wonderful, benevolent overlord group and the insertion of selfish, practically evil overlords in their place.
He was asserting the disappearance of an overlord group with a conspicuous influential minority of wonderfully benevolent people and its gross replacement by selfish, practically evil overlords.
Wide difference.
Donald Trump in the White House undermines any idea that the United States is a functional meritocracy. His rise to power taints the validity of all positions of power. The qualifications of all politicians, professors and CEOs are suspect in a society where corruption and greed rises to the top.
1
Intelligence is distributed equally across genders, races, casts. Problem is that opportunity is not.. Focusing on meritocracy or societal position as all that is necessary to thrive is a terrible waste of potential that would benefit all.
1
@Mark; "Intelligence is distributed equally". Is that actually true? There's anecdotal evidence that it is not; the elephant in the room that no one is prepared to acknowledge; a topic that can't be studied because it would be a career-ending move for academics trying to do it. Why? Because equality is the unquestioned basis of democracy. If races or ethnic groups are inherently different they deserve different political rights--and, Pfft!, there goes democracy, to be replaced by, what?
Finding the flaws in a meritocracy starts with the day the term was coined in 1958 when a British sociologist named Michael Young published the book “The Rise of the Meritocracy”. It’s a combination of a sociological study (with footnotes) and speculative fiction about an experiment to replace the existing British system with a meritocracy. Spoiler alert: the experiment goes badly. You can read the book. It’s a good read. Or you can read the summary of the book on Wikipedia. The summary of the summary is this quote from Mr. Young: “It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.”
2
This country was originally governed by Normans, who considered WASPs to be inferior as the Normans had conquered England and made short work of the WASPs. At some point the two groups became conflated in our minds, but still, this columns take is a bit ahistorical.
My hero is an anti-WASP. He was a bachelor farmer who worked the land til the day he died. He was generous, hard-working, kind, quiet, Oh and did I say GENEROUS.
If it was Sunday, his car was at the local Catholic Church. I worked beside him for 5 years of my public school years. He never made reference to his religion. He lived it. He would send me to pick apples as his sister would bake a pie for lunch. He said to take the truck and a ladder, as the apples that could be picked from the ground were for people walking by. He owned the land, the apples and the tree. But he reserved those available apples for those happening by. He was far from wealthy. And died on his tractor spreading cow waste in his late 70's. No body spoke ill of him in town. I could cash my paycheck in any store in town. They all knew him.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around the typical thought of WASP.
1
This is true! There have been any number of critiques or meritocracy from the left, so it is stunning to see Douhat rehearsing the argument.
The most promising sign of falling regard for the useless elite was a bishop being dogged by a reporter in Pennsylvania and losing his composure. Maybe we will finally see the end of priests and nuns who pride themselves on their sexual inexperience claiming any authority in the matter of sex. I would never support expanding the influence of Catholicism or any institution that teaches kids that God hates their bodies, that God favors abstinence, that God abhors responsible measures like birth control and that argues all this from a place of total ignorance. I think I've really pinned them down. I expect a call from the Pope tomorrow to sort all this out.
1
Boy, this is sensitive. I’m not sure I would commend going back to aristocracy. I’m not sure that would be even possible considering there are no longer Madisonian aristocrats of the kind Douthat refers to.
Anyway, I’m more than convinced that present day meritocracy won’t do. We are talking about high achievers whose arrogance is only matched by their lack of cultural and restraining references.
One thing that strikes me when I speak with people educated in top American universities is how easily they speak of winners and losers.
A cultivated aristocrat with a republican ethos would never resort to such fascist language. And he would never self-justify himself as a winner...
Umm---Ross, I thought you came from a well-off white Protestant family that converted to Catholicism when you were young. So praising the supposed virtues of the WASPs may not be as disinterested as you suggest.
The WASP elite (like most elites, meritocratic or not) had a number of scandals on its hands over the years. Richard Whitney came from a distinguished financial family, but was caught and convicted of embezzling in the 1930s.
Then again, another Richard--- Nixon---was not an establishment WASP, and he also was guilty of major misdeeds. I could cherry pick examples from other elites, too, but the bottom line is that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The only cure is vigilance and skepticism.
1
"without the sense of duty, self-restraint and noblesse oblige that WASPs at their best displayed." And which the WASP elite at its worst, or perhaps just its average, did not display all that much. George H.W. Bush and John McCain stand out because they were fairly unique among the WASP elite. I think it equally accurate to restate your above quote as "the sense of duty, self-restraint, and noblesse oblige that (the most meritocratic, blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Catholics, women, gays, atheists, any group you could choose to name) display at their best. George W. was not George H.W. Neither are most members of the WASP elite. And, of course, in your mind you are focusing on the New England WASP elite. There are lots of other WASP elites, among Evangelical Protestants and main-line Protestants across the nation. If by WASP elites, you were referring to 'old monied folk', there are a lot of those families all over our nation, as well. Some are great people and superlative Americans, some are scoundrels, some are moral and intellectual successes and contributors, without being as wealthy as other members of their family. You just can't generalize, as you have done, from George H.W. Bush to an idealized WASP elite.
The unspoken part of this argument is that an elite has both a greater stake in the outcome of running the country and more experience (presumably generational) in doing it. Lucky losers like Trump are the one hit wonders of politics.
Whether that appeals to most people's sense of justice and reward for performance or not is a different matter.
I believe Mr. Douthat has stepped in disheartening white male panic. We do not elect the meritorious. Capitalism swallows them whole and debases them. He seems to have a weak grasp on Calvinism, one tenet being "the outward signs of grace" that come with the Elect. Beautiful homes and snazzy cars lead to heaven. Really? And a Catholic Elect? Again. really? and Catholic power is patriarchal, right?
1
"[I}t makes the past seem irrelevant, because everyone is supposed to come from the same nowhere and rule based on technique alone."
That about sums it up, doesn't it? Not only can one not be proud that their ancestors came over on an early boat, you're supposed to be downright ashamed of it. Which leaves us...where?
A country where anyone with a even a scent or scintilla of 'privilege' is persona non grata. A country where manners are considered pretentious and traditions are rendered obsolete. A country that---the American Left has made it quite clear---is no longer a welcome place for Public Enemy No. 1, the 'W' in WASP. Of course, the 'A', 'S' and 'P' have long since become irrelevant anyway.
And you wonder why so many eulogized the passing of George Herbert Walker Bush. It was our own eulogy too, painful as it was to admit.
Zirp began a new era. The end of meritocracy and the rise of the cabal- Wall Street!
1
I understand the gist of the argument. However, the distinctions and definitions of who are WASPs, aristocrats or meritocrats are simply overbroad and lack specificity related to history. The Livingstons looked down on the Vanderbilts. The Vanderbilts looked down on well.....The Lowells spoke only to the Cabots and the Cabots spoke only to God. ( I believe that it is actually the Lowes.) Don't ask how the aristocracy made their money because they might resemble our President or worse! As for meritocrats, scratch the surface and many look a lot like the robber barons. How can one wish for a Catholic aristocracy after the atrocities committed by the big "C". The unbelievable lack of civility in today's society begs for a leader to speak to our better selves. I don't care if it is an aristo, merito, or millenial.
3
@Kathryn The Cabots made lots of money in the slave trade. As did many other members of the WASP "aristocracy."
2
@Anne-Marie O'Connor
Good catch. That is why I said don't ask how aristos made their money. If you read "Opium Wars", the route to China and the market for opium was supplied by the English "aristos",and later WASPS. The list is long and well documented of the aristos who participated in both the opium and slave trade. There is a good book called"New England Bound". Sadly, even the computer and phone that I use were assembled with harmful chemicals and cheap labor that elevated many into the meritocracy! Let's see what the millennials do now to right the ship.
I agree with most of this indictment of our self-congratulatory, self-serving, self-proclaimed "meritocratic" elite. But I am puzzled that Ross Douthat, like David Brooks, is so nostalgic for the WASP elite that formerly ruled the United States. Douthat claims that the old elite possessed "inherited responsibility and cultural stewardship," and was restrained by "the disciplines of duty." But the old elite, too, was self-interested, myopic, and utterly unconcerned about the views of the majority of Americans. Ross Douthat may pine for this bygone elite. I do not.
3
Douthat seems to be missing something very obvious, which is simply to instill an ethos of service. All his tortured explanations of why the old elite was good and this one is bad boil down to that. There’s nothing to say it can’t be re-instilled, unless you think it’s genetic.
"I think ideals of diversity and meritocracy are two different ways of shaping an elite, which can advance together but which are just as often separable, or even in tension with each other."
First WASP -- White Anglo-Saxon Protestant -- is about being white and Anglo-Saxon, neither of which are inherently aristocratic. Being white is just like being any other color attributed to any other ethnic group, except, for the power held by a group with white skin. So, in effect, what is being talked about is power.
The WASP attained their power through suppression of other ethnic and religious groups. Through suppression, they gained an economic position of power and, ergo, privilege. The notion that one can move into the WASP aristocracy through any other means other than being White Anglo-Saxon Protestant is a joke. The very nature of being a part of the "club" is restricted by nationality and religion. None of the people, including Douthat himself, is eligible for membership, unless Douthat is a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. He has already admitted to being a Catholic; therefore, he is of the wrong religious persuasion. Is he "white"? Is he "Anglo-Saxon"? Barack Obama is half white but was his mother Anglo-Saxon? He's a Protestant, though.
WASPs do not attain to that august position through merit. They are born to it!
An interesting couple of essays Mr. Douthat. I'm reminded of that Atlantic article about the 9.9% that everyone hated.
These generalizations are not at all valid. Perhaps it is intellectual fun and games for Douthat and many of the commenters, but it is of no importance.
1
As usual, it's hard to really fathom what Mr. Douthat is implying.
If one is against meritocracy, what else should be in its place? Aristocracy? Theocracy? Oligarchy? How about military rule?
Try as he might to make sense of Trump's America, Douthat might be better off examining his own role in enabling the kakistocracy now confronting us. While their is much shared blame, the WORST of us - whatever class they are - played the leading role.
How about 'The Case against Fools & Crooks?'
1
" In these misreadings, there was an assumption that to praise, in any way, the elite that predated the modern meritocracy is to reject racial diversity, minority and female advancement, in favor of permanent white rule.
That’s not my view."
It may not be your view, putatively, but that is the historical fact of our nation, and to obliviously white wash that historicity is to be complicit with it. You are advocating a nostalgic return to white supremacy, you just have to put your old wine in new bottles.
1
Read the all-knowing God of this field, E. Digby Baltzell, a Penn sociology professor who understood WASPS and the need of the nation to create new meritocracy-based aristocracies with new and unfamiliar blood. It should be one of our bibles.
It's a good article -- it has been clear to me for years that the "meritocracy" is more or less a sham, and a quite harmful one because of the self-justifying myths that it hides behind, and the vapid idea that "if everyone were like us upper middle class highly educated professionals, they'd all be fine!", rather than a realization that talent/ability distribution is not egalitarian, and that we will therefore always have an elite class and a ruled class. The question is how to select the elites, and how to imbue them with a sense of responsibility rather than a sense of "earned place", which is entitlement. Very hard to do, given how entrenched the "meritocracy" has become as a system, and as a set of beliefs as well.
7
@rbt How does an UNEARNED place increase a sense of social responsibility?
It can in the sense that the person in that position can not claim to have "merited" it or "earned" it -- they were simply given it, and they therefore bear some responsibility to others who were not given that gift. When someone believes that they "earned" their spot in the elite, they are more prone to think that others could also "earn" their way there, and therefore feelings of responsibility to others who have no access to what you think you "earned" diminishes. That's true, and it's the point of the article. That doesn't mean bring back landed gentry, but it does mean that there is something missing in the current meritocratic elite in this context.
I am Irish Catholic, the first group to rebel against WASP dominance. But I agree with this article. Selfless Americans grounded in the history of the republic are in dangerously short supply.
10
There’s an implicit assumption here that some form of ingrained or institutionalized hierarchy is necessary and preferable. It isn’t. The problem isn’t who has exorbitant amounts of power, it’s the failure to truly enact the democratic ideals and checks on power that we must aspire to in order to be free from tyrants, aristocratic or otherwise.
7
Well, Ross, the antidote to the "meritocracy"/aristocracy would be less a wistful glance backward to adorable noblesse oblige and more enactment of policies antithetical to "conservatism".
The "death tax" would be a good start. And taxing billionaires and cash rich corporations would also level the playing field -- if applied to educational, social, economic, public infrastructure.
But, NO -- what we will get is a compelling debate about "values".
Like the "Pro-Life" folks who have a stirring philosophical position on when young life begins, but -- apparently -- less practical urgency when reading about born children starving post-utero.
15
People create myths about how they are and how their ancestors/ predecessors were.
Trump acts as if he has earned an Ivy League degree. He believes this to the point that he would question whether Barack Obama deserved his degree. Looking at behavior and bearing, you would definitely believe that Obama had a better upbringing than Trump.
Trump is classified as a blue collar billionaire because of his racism, xenophobia, and nationalism. Trump will never portray his classisms since his supporters believe he is one of them in spite of the fact that he has probably never worked outside his father’s East Coast empire or probably never have done a day of physical labor.
Even George W Bush tried to claim that his father endured difficulties in life in moving from the East Coast to Texas. There are almost no difficulties that money won’ t overcome in short fashion and the Bushes have always had money.
These are just examples of how people create myths about their own behavior. They also create the myths about their group’s behavior and the good old days. WASP culture was good for well to do WASPS. A Meritocracy has never been and never will be unless you give all children from birth an equal opportunity. Advantages actually start upon conception and increase exponentially from there.
8
Today's meritocratic class is imbued libertarians who believe in Ayn Rand's virtue of selfishness and Milton Friedman's economic theories. Thus, instead having a class of leaders who value effective government based on democratic principles we have a class of leaders who believe the invisible hand of the marketplace should replace any government regulations. Therefore the slow and inefficient democracy we have in place should be replaced by a plutocracy whereby elite philanthropists can assess the collateral damage inflicted by the unregulated marketplace and use their good judgement to determine where where and how resources should be allocated.
11
Great essay! (Read the first one, too.) one thing: the meritocracy is a myth, the aristocracy is not.
11
Ross,
You seem to be trying to conflate two terms that should be understood as different. "Aristocracy" invokes the thought/belief that some people are deserving of high leadership positions based upon their birth-rite--the social rank of their family more generally thought to be royalty. "Meritocracy" is more the attainment of higher social position through successful performance and valued achievement, such as in academia, military, sports, business, or government. Prime examples of meritocracy would be promotion up the enlisted military ranks via clear superior performance observed and documented in the yearly evaluations or clear superior performance shown through teaching, research, and writing at a college or university via faculty evaluations. Albeit both are subject to the human vice of occasional corrupt bias or the insertion of sickening autocracy , these generally result in the most capable people ascending in leadership hierarchy.
In any case, meritocracy is the clear ethical choice of method in selecting leadership. Play well, teach well, fight hard, and study hard should lead to social advancement in contrast to simply having emerged from an autocratic bloodline. While what you write is sympathetic to the current Trumpian battle cry against their evil "elites", the result is off-base and just an attempt to conflate the meaning of two entirely different things.
6
For a brilliant, deep and very readable analysis of American WASPs and the nature of aristocracies in general, there's nothing like Tocqueville's, "Democracy in America." As with Mr. Douthat, Tocqueville writes as if he's a neutral observer, but there's the sense throughout that he rues the loss of a privileged, ruling elite.
The part of understanding WASPs Douthat completely ignores, but that is central to Tocqueville's analysis, is that WASPs constitute a peculiar kind of aristocracy that could only emerge in American democracy--never in France, certainly not in England.
For Tocqueville, American democracy was at one and the same time a manifestation of the most just society imaginable and a risky venture into the unknown that might very well result in tragedy. He feared democracy, unlike aristocracy, would lead to mass conformity and eventually, the end of freedom.
Tocqueville wrote, of course, before the rise of a meritocracy. He thought that what would replace aristocracy, and eventually destroy democracy, was an out of control love of commerce and money. It seems to me he got that part pretty much right.
P.S. Glad you set the record straight, Mr. Douthat, that in your heart of hearts, you'd like to see a ruling Catholic aristocracy (which I figure you know full well means all male). But no, I didn't ask; I was too afraid this would be the answer.
6
Neat column, but Douthat misses the biggest problem inherent in meritocracy. Under a democratic system of government, meritocracy can't work unless those judged to be of less merit are docile about it—even judge themselves to be less meritorious—and agree to be ruled by their more-meritorious betters. Otherwise, the less meritorious just go to the ballot box, and overturn the system.
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@S.P.
That's a great observation! Yes, that's insightful, and in a democracy, they have that right. So of course, they will exercise it.
Wasps and obscure 'moneymakers' (don't ask how it was made) always had a 'chip on their shoulders', and did consider that having servants (being served!) was their privilege. Geworge Orwell said it best: in this democracy, although we all are equal, some are more equal than others. This, independent from their religious make-believe instincts. And meritocracy is not equivalent to a more equitable society, no matter how inclusive our diversity.
4
How about we do away with financial and power elites altogether? We tax the rich and high earners at very high rates so they don't have enough to subvert the will of the people. We use the revenues to guarantee a decent quality of life for all. Is there a problem with that scenario? I don't see it.
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@Sam Rose
If high earnings are to be taxed away, then what will be the point of striving to earn more?
4
@boroka A reasonable amount of wealth that doesn't continuously cycle on Wall Street, demanding infinite growth, and parasitizing anything in its path to get there?
$10M/year isn't enough? How about $20M PER YEAR? Is that enough?
3
For the fun of the game. High taxes will not stop people from earning wealth. In the early days of income taxes the highest earners paid up to 79%. That didn’t deter them!
7
Thank you for this addition to your previous column.
We are not in that category of the "elite." In fact, we don't even know anybody who is.
But we do see elitism in our world--a type of ruthless, superior, and "classist" mental framework toward the world, and toward other people. Look at the comments in the NYT about people in the mid-west who voted for Trump--a vote many of them cast while holding their noses, but also a vote of desperation because the new "elites" had been ignoring their lives for too long. And now, those elites don't ignore them, to everyone's peril.
I voted for Clinton, proudly. But, consistent with Douthat's view, Bush would never have categorized people as "deplorable" as she did.
We are always going to have "elites." That is a part of human nature. What we have devolved to is people like Trump being one of them.
5
It's about self-reflection and empathy, isn't it? If you understand you are fallible, that you stand on the shoulders of those who came before--whether patrician or penniless, if you recognize that luck good and bad can change the course of one's life, and can see that intelligence comes in many forms, if you decide that what makes your life meaningful is not the accumulation of money or power, then you are an asset to society. WASP or meritocrat, we all face the same limit to our time on earth. It's how we spend that most important resource that matters.
11
The issue of deciding who belongs in what category is complex and always leads to error. Am I a WASP? I look like one. I have regiments of ancestors, some of whom were rich and powerful. (None of their money came down to me, though quite a bit of their china and flatware did.) I wear 3 piece suits with a pocket watch to the college classes I teach. I live in an old house with a 20,000 volume library, some of which dates to the 1600s and ancestral portraits of like vintage. All classic WASP. However, I am also gay and an activist, married for 23 years to a black man and politically liberal verging on radical. I admire monarchies but voted for Obama and Bernie. I never joined a country club and I loath golf. In other words I'm one of those confusing things called a human being. Any standard label you put on me is going to be wrong and I am far from alone in that regard.
19
The problem of meritocracy in America today and indeed the problem of meritocracy over all of human history?
A discussion of meritocracy had best begin by an accurate definition of it: A meritocracy in society is simply that group of people who have achieved excellence in this or that particular field or discipline, meaning not necessarily politics or economics, and the origin of meritocracies began in particular techniques developed within society such as how to wage war or make pottery or how to do math or write well. Technique developed in society first in this or that area among few members and then a direction was established which developed into an order and then a meritocracy insofar as measure of excellence in that direction became defined.
In short meritocracy began among the rather small things in life and has always been difficult to establish over society as a whole, which is to say it's difficult to establish true meritocracy in the political field. Anyone, for example, can examine the history of music and see no pretenders ever make into the roster of the truly great, but politics up to the present day is a rigged order, why even monarchies still exist, some of which are supposedly compatible with democracy, and no one would say political design today proceeds with the integrity of fields such as art or literature not to mention sports, where true excellence is constantly sought after, redefined, never thought to have been definitely achieved.
You finish.
1
Very interesting.
I need more help with the ‘born on third base’ concept. I’m a 3rd generation Irish-American woman, born in Boston. Grandparents didn’t finish school, parents worked hard to go to college, then my generation went to college and graduate school - Ivy League. We all worked our tails off to get in, and to pay for it. I understand the privilege of going and that it was easier for me than my parents. I grew up in the suburbs. Am I supposed to raise my kids somewhere with mediocre schools and not send them to college to reject some kind of privilege? We have been working for this for our whole lives and I feel like there is a sentiment that we are taking someone else’s place by exercising undue privilege. I don’t fully understand it.
The WASPy town I grew up in used to have a sign that Irish people were not allowed to stop over. We always thought it was funny that we were ‘allowed’ to live there by the 1970s. My kids don’t have to worry about that sort of thing. But other ethnic groups are now feeling unwelcome in many places.
8
Ross, every self-proclaimed "elite" is prone to the vice of hubris. Whether it masquerades as "meritocracy" or it is hereditary and is taught "good manners", as Bush clearly was. We are all limited by our own experience of the world and we often feel it is the "right" or "best" way, then we proceed to rationalize it as best as we can.
7
"the rich kid with a Wharton degree posturing as a self-made man..."
Just one clarification. While the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania is very prestigious in its own right. I attended there for some time though am not an alumnus.
However, an undergraduate degree from that school is not typically considered a "Wharton" degree. It is a degree from the University of Pennsylvania. The "Wharton" designation is usually reserved for those with graduate degrees, such as an MBA. I attended Columbia University for my MBA. Upon graduation we competed with Harvard MBAs, Northwestern MBAs, and Wharton grads.
Don't let Trump's crowing about his Wharton degree muddy the actual interpretation of the term.
11
It seems to me that the author's critique of meritocracy is actually focuses on the problems created by the remaining vestiges of the system of elites. It is not in the idea of meritocracy but rather its flawed execution by the institutions that are used to signal merit that is the problem. In many cases, meritocracy is a front to continue the favored treatment of the elites. There is only the illusion of a meritocracy.
6
The question come to mind as to WHY the elite are in that position in the first place?
Someone - a white male - 3 or 4 generations back got wealthy. Very wealthy. With that, came all of the trappings of power. Political office. Control and influence over the legislature. A level of immunity for crimes committed. Access to the universities where the offspring of their loins and those from similarly situated families can attend and make connections with their kind of people. The ability to gain ever more wealth. If the workers and just plain ol' commoners get the short end of the stick, maybe their wives can do some charitable work and thus make it o.k. The best part is how, like hair color, this gets passed on to subsequent generations. Presto - they are elite and thus wiser, more entitled to run things.
It's all about wealth. Not intelligence. Not character. Surely not wisdom. It's just plain ol' raw power. That is who Ross seems to feel are the natural leaders. Oddly, we can see the start of another elite family right here and now.
12
"Merit" is an empty vessel. We should also ask, WHAT do we regard as meritorious, and HOW MUCH do we reward it?
8
The meritocracy also has an unfortunate habit of elevating the dim and the dull to positions of power to which they are unsuited. W Bush and Jared Kushner would be the prime examples. Yale as a legacy, Harvard by purchase of building, etc. The meritocracy will insist that their wealth and position entitle them to lead (rule) over the rest of us, simply because of who they are. not what they know, what they have experienced or what they have learned.
20
@Peter You are saying meritocracy doesn't work because it is not used? As you state, "elevating the dim and the dull to positions of power to which they are unsuited." This is not meritocracy but rather the perpetuation of the system of advantaged, connected elites. W. Bush and Kushner are both examples. Neither achieved their success by demonstrating merit or ability. Both were born and/or married into their success. You complaint is not against meritocracy but rather its corruption by the elite, favored class.
1
@CWP2 That is exactly what I am saying. For years we have been told about the rise of the meritocracy, but in the end it is little more than the continued existence of the privileged and the powerful. Remember that even David Halberstam was talking about this in the Kennedy era as "The Best and the Brightest".
@Peter Legacy admissions seem to be a vestige of the old aristocracy Douthat yearns for rather than the new meritocracy. George W. Bush would never have been admitted to Yale based on merit.
Modern society, with it's large multinational corporation and tech industries that have free reign to everyone's personal data, is structured to exploit. The vast majority of us are kept at a place that basically generates more wealth for the 1%. The problem with meritocracy is that it too often tracks the most capable into this larger structure of exploitation. The underlying problem to all this is government that lacks merit in functioning for the whole of society. There needs to be sensible guidelines to how profits are spread throughout wages and progressive taxation.
6
Thank you Mr. Douthat for delving in more to expose meritocracy. A few months ago I came across the books "Tailspin" and "Winners Take All" which also explore this theme.
As someone who personally benefited (prep and Ivy League) from the earlier days of the opening up of elite institutions, I started to see something was deeply wrong as I saw how many of my peers devoted huge efforts (e.g. making sure to buy only houses near the best schools, shuttle their children to band, sports practice - not to mention the test coaching via Kumon, Kaplan etc.) - all to ensure that they could pass on membership in the meritocracy - all while not seeing the inequality getting worse just beyond their privileged neighborhood/communities.
Yes, diversity is important and much has been accomplished, but there's more going on beneath the surface.
Please keep digging away at this topic.
12
@LeeMD
Let's be clear: Douthat open advocates an aristocracy. In particular, he opposes equal opportunity by definition, and prefers an aristocracy defined by religious affiliation.
We have never seen a meritocracy in this country. This is a myth. When we do, you can try to expose it. But as of now, opportunities for social and economic advancement in this country fall well below much of the developed world as measured by numerous studies. Well before the prep and Ivy-League schooling you benefited from, a five-year-old's future success is defined not by his ability and character, but by his parent's income and what neighborhood he grows up in.
4
"And ascend they often did, because the older American system was both hierarchical and permeable, with room for actual merit even without a meritocratic organizing theory."
-------
Therein lies the rub.
Meritocracy is fundamentally an organic competitive process, and the more diverse the more the merrier.
The original American version was controlled by the Newport "cottage" owning gentry, who turned up their noses at the "new money" class of the Gilded Age engaged in expanding commerce, creating jobs, broadening the middle class, thereby creating diversity as a natural byproduct.
Social and economic factions will always exist. However diversity will not be advanced by paeans to the old "Mainline" aristocracy which was essentially a construct contrived by the "Lowell's speak only to Cabots" class to maintain and reserve social and political power to them alone.
2
@Sam
Sure, it's fine to say meritocracy is more egalitarian. And it is. But we're going to have to come up with some way to constrain the meritocrats and help them see their own weaknesses. It does no good if "Lowells speak only to Cabots" just becomes "New Yorkers speak only to San Franciscans; if you live in the South Bay, my Brooklyn assistant can take the message; if Chicago or Peoria, please come through Pittsburgh to Boston and we'll see if we can talk".
5
@Wayne. A maximum annual income and a ceiling on personal assets. At some point, capitalists should be declared winners and then retired. A livable environment on this planet requires no less.
4
@Wayne
Your observations are apt.
However, imperfections aside, I suggest that relative to others,' our Constitutional/economic/social paradigm embracing a dynamic of competition is as good or perhaps even better than than the rest.
WASP privilège was extended by two generations through the meritocracy meme, and now that it is under threat (Harvard admissions lawsuit, e.g.), a fresh concept is now required. The price paid was opening the system to a large but controlled number of outsiders (who massively benefited from it, by the way) and leaving behind the impression that the rules of the game were fair and pricipled, as Mr Douthat alludes to. There is no doubt that the aristocracy (i.e., those with the dough to preserve the status quo, a club that has swelled to an extent that renders quaint the rubrique ‘WASP’) will collectively converge on a new strategy for a new generation.
1
Interesting point of view expressed by Mr. Douthat one of the very few contemporary Conservatives worth reading. (I capitalized "Conservative" because I think he's still a member, if somewhat marginally, of the Conservative Movement. Perhaps that's unfair)
I wish he were more clear on who belongs to the meritocracy. A statement such as, "the typical meritocrat is born on third base", seems to imply that it's a rather small group.
I, raised a Catholic, was able to attend an Ivy League school in the late sixties and am still close with many of the friends I made there. None of of us made it around the bases in my understanding of what that would mean. We weren't born on 3rd base. Most of us did manage to forge interesting careers but we are not members of an economic elite. Are we members of the meritocracy?
So a little more detail from Mr. Douthat would be useful in understanding his thesis.
6
Wasn’t there a long ago book titled The Rise if the Meritocracy? And wasn’t one of the issues how does one function if one “deserves” one’s fate and can’t blame it on prejudice or some such?
2
I trust that your tongue firmly was planted in your cheek when you suggested that, "I don’t want to bring back the WASPs; if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile", Ross. I needn't remind you of the old adage that, "I was born a Catholic and I'll die a Catholic", and yes, I was bred to be Catholic as well.
However, none of that relieves me of my profound discomfort at recent revelations of massive clerical child sexual abuse and worse yet, widespread attempts to cover it up at the highest levels of the Church hierarchy, to say nothing of indications that this has been going on for far longer than initially was believed. Couple this with concurrent serious financial irregularities, including money laundering and obsessive secrecy at the Vatican Bank and hardball politicking among the Curia, and Catholicism hardly seems to be the wave of the future.
Issues like these notwithstanding, it's clear that we need to recognize the legitimacy of other religions. Theological doctrine aside, and I choose to subscribe to that which I've been given, the Bible is no more a panacea for our social travails than is the Quoran or the Torah. It is, after all, a 2,000-year-old document translated in multiple versions by different scholars from a long-defunct language. All we know about its authors are what they've told us about themselves. Religion is more about faith than it is about facts.
11
Legend has it that the US was founded on the idea that all men are equal.
Reality shows that the US is deeply divided among racial and gender lines, something that most other countries have overcome a while or ar at least overcoming right now.
If one talks about diversity, he has to implement quotas and restrictions for those that are not the best society has to offer.
Singapore has done well by being a meritocracy that does not care much for race, which is an outdated idea anyway as skin colour has nothing to do with your intellectual abilities, and does not really care about quotas, except when it comes to protect a few minorities.
So I wonder about the fascination the US has about race and quotas and state run ideas about diversity?
Doesn't that, in reality, slow down your society?
Singapore has shown that the idea of a merit based society works better and lowers gender, racial and religious divides.
But then again, we have shed the idea of white supremacy and being a nation under one invisible, imaginary friend too.
3
@Thomas. We remain a slave economy albeit without classical slavery. We continue to undervalue labor.
2
@Thomas
"So I wonder about the fascination the US has about race and quotas and state run ideas about diversity?
Doesn't that, in reality, slow down your society?"
Does anyone question whether 45million blacks have slowed our society?
1
@Thomas "most other countries have overcome" racial and gender divisions?!
News to me.
You tout Singapore as an example. I'll admit I don't know much about Singapore. I'm wondering what other examples you might have. China? France? India? Russia? Mexico? I really don't see this global trend you're talking about.
1
For those who want a more complete understanding than here of the weakness of an overarching meritocracy the book "Twilight of the Elites : America after Meritocracy"
by Chris Hayes does an excellent job.
Boy today we could use both the the privileged decency of Franklin Roosevelt and the smarts of John Kennedy.
7
Roosevelt and Kennedy were very unusual in their place. Roosevelt was hated by the elites and branded a socialist and Kennedy was shot by the elites/ Say no more
Yes, a Catholic monarchy could be a wise idea providing it took it's guidance from a Traditional Catholic Pope. Unfortunately such a Pope has been absent from the scene since Pius XII. After Pius the Catholic Church became a bastion of materialistic political Progressive-ism.
But not to worry. Our Presidency has become a sort of monarchy since our Congress has failed to do it's job. Our two recent kings, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, have each satisfied half of our population with the other half expressing various levels of dismay.
Bottom line: There is nothing wrong with our system. The problem is the lack of balance between the three components. It is too easy for Congress to pass the buck to the President or the Court. Congress must learn to work together and stop complaining about the President.
2
@Michael Dowd
Would we be better off if Congress busted out of the 2-party straitjacket? 3 or 4 competitive parties would be fun to watch.
1
@Michael Dowd Egads! You want to bring back the Inquisition. Ouch!
Reading these comments re-enforces my belief that the majority of people are incapable of seeing more than a small slice of the modern problems we all face at any given time, and can therefore never come to the real solutions to these problems. The root of all humanities current problems is the inequality of the wealth derived from the natural resources of our planet.To refuse to accept this is to never be able to find solutions to all of the many different problems that arise from it. Whatever the truth is about wealth concentrations in the hands of so few humans, whether 400 families hold 80% of the worlds wealth or 500 families do, the issue of so many humans having control of far more wealth than is moral for any individual to have while so many humans fail to have enough to live a dignified life is the basis of the problem. There will always be humans with more material wealth than others, but when the limits to what a single human should control has no limits, other humans will suffer. Whether Gandhi ever said this or not does not make it untrue, "the world can support mans needs, but it cannot support mans greed." An upper-class that respects no limit on what wealth it can morally own will always be illegitimate to govern, regardless of how that class is defined. If you believe that an individual who has a net worth of more than $10,000,000 can understand the needs of one who has none you are part of the problem.
73
@Ed Clark This was brilliant commentary. I truly enjoyed your analysis. It is spot-on correct. Thanks.
10
@Ed Clark Your concept that most "wealth (is) derived from the natural resources of our planet" is highly dubious. It ain't farmers who have the most wealth.
In fact the economic decay of so many rural areas is primarily because wealth is now mostly derived from knowledge.
I also quite disagree with this assertion "If you believe that an individual who has a net worth of more than $10,000,000 can understand the needs of one who has none you are part of the problem." Ever heard of FDR?
But I do agree with your general thrust about the current concentration of wealth. It is obscene and deeply damaging to our society, our people and our planet.
Just saying I think you need to look a little deeper at this problem and recognize that we're in a new age and the old solutions are unlikely to be useful.
2
@Jack Toner
The limit of characters allowed in these comments precludes a detailed analysis of anything along with the ability to establish definitions of key words and concepts. This leaves me with relying on generalities to express complex systems. An example of this is your assumption that rural America has decayed because knowledge has usurped it's value. The value of rural America, farm products, has not kept pace with other commodities because of social policies that were instituted by the governments and individuals who controlled their distribution, an ear of corn has not lost its value to a hungry person. I am fully aware that there are always exception to any rule, many a poor man has lived a life of worth and many a rich man has also, but just what are the percentages of worthy lives lived in each category, and what defines a life well lived? This is the real question. Can you answer that in 1500 characters or less?
4
All this talk about an aristocracy in America is simply foolishness. Read the definition. It is about a ruling class comprised of hereditary nobles. America has never ever had such a ruling class. In fact one of the reasons the ordinary people fought as patriots during the American Revolution was to stop the growing tendency of the wealthier middle class to act like the old nobility did in England. The American establishment is comprised of all kinds of elements, not just the wealthy upper class of the Eastern seaboard, although since it was first, along with the wealthy (but indebted) planter class of the upper South, its manners and morals set a powerful imprint. However its influence was rapidly expanded and enriched by the Jacksonian democratic revolution and all the others since, including the revolutions wrought by the Roosevelts, African Americans, gays, women, as well as the contributions of ethnic groups. The establishment has always been meritocratic in the USA.
3
If you don't believe that the US never had an aristocracy you have never applied for membership in the DAR (and the SAR and the CAR) or the Mayflower equivalent. Out in California there are the Native Sons (and daughters?) of the Golden West. You get into those organisations only by direct ancestry (no adoopted children need apply). And then you should compare the eligibilty requirements for the DAR with the Order of the Cincinnatus (which is restricted exclusively for descents of commissioned officers).
1
I'm afraid that in this case I agree with at least the first part of Mr Douthat's thesis; that is, the WASPs had at least some sense of duty and service. They were descended for the most part from traders, but over time some of them began to understand that service is a high calling.
But I disagree with his image of the meritocracy. What we have here is a witches' brew of greed, amorality, and other unpleasant attributes. Unfortunately the current system rewards these traits, as witness Tesla's Musk, Wells Fargo's Stumpf and Tolstedt, and Lehman Bros' Fuld. In what sense are these people meritocrats?
For a good look at the perils of a pure meritocracy, see Michael Young's 'The Rise of the Meritocracy'.
16
I think it would be a good idea to break down social barriers by bringing back the draft for all men and women. With one important change. Make national service mandatory and extend GI bill education benefits universally, BUT have military service voluntary within that system and with additional benefits.
36
@Federalist
Training of military personnel is extensive and expensive enough that we would have to lock new draftees in for 6 or even 8 years to justify adding them to the Army, etc.
Every 6 months or so I see one Democrat or another jumping up all excited about bringing the draft back. It's ALWAYS a Democrat.
2
@L'osservatore I think you did not read all of my comment. In particular the part about keeping the military volunteer. As for the minimum service needing to be 6 or 8 years military service in the US is now typically for a 4 year contract. I agree that the length of service for military volunteers would need to be longer than the civilian version, another reason why volunteers for military service should get additional benefits besides the hazards.
6
Good comment and reply. I would add that anyone over 18 who does not volunteer for such service, and absent a learning disability, should study for GED or occupational skills.
1
In reading this follow up, I'm still not sure "who" the meritocracy is (specific examples would help... Trump is more confusing than clarifying). That said, two points:
1) I think it's useful to discuss WASP culture and the larger implication that there is not only one kind of whiteness. In discussions of identity politics, this point is often overlooked (to the detriment of progressive attempts at persuasading the non-converted).
2) As other commenters have written, mandatory service would do alot towards putting the elite in touch with something other than privilege and entitlement. It would also be good for their health to get off the internet for a moment.
15
I think the problem is more a lack of overall commitment to public service and public infrastructure. It seems profoundly unamerican to hail an aristocracy, though I think Ross is raising very important points about the ways in which today's leadership is failing the country. I wouldn't care what we called it as long as it was not leaving the rest of the country out in the cold, by underinvesting in public education and infrastructure and healthcare and parks and paid leave. This underinvestment creates a vicious circle: the new meritocracy is afraid not to take the corporate jobs being dangled in front of them because living conditions one to two steps below are frightening, we pull our kids out of public schools because their level of rigidity is often chilling, and soon we are living in a bubble of likeminded people, reinforcing all the problems Ross is describing. It will take a return of effective public institutions providing decent living standards for a much wider swath of Americans to stop the current disaster. I speak as an Ivy league educated person who actually does feel obligated to give back to society, which I have done through federal service and teaching. And my kids are in public school for now, but it's sometimes scary.
35
My godfather was a real dyed in the wool WASP.
His family was from Maine. He volunteered after Pearl Harbor, was on the beach at Normandy. He then matriculated at Harvard and Harvard Law.
He was a good man.
When I was in college, I visited him and my godmother, also a WASP and a good woman, on Cape Cod, where their families had a cluster of houses.
My godfather and I went for a jog on the beach one morning and I saw some trash, bottles lying in the sand. I jogged over, picked them up, then jogged over to a nearby trashcan and threw them away.
He stopped, put his hands on his hips, looked at me and said, "You're a good citizen."
I laughed and told him that my Mother, one of his great friends, would make me and my siblings take trash bags and pick up trash on the beaches during summer vacation.
He laughed.
He passed away two years ago and I think about him, often.
I think about his ethics, his morality, his code, him telling me I was "a good citizen."
He was an old-school Republican, not a perfect man, but a good citizen.
What does that mean in 2018, to be a good citizen?
Does it mean to make as much money as possible?
Does it mean to meet with governments who wish us ill?
Does it mean that the murder of a journalist is transactional?
Does it mean that one should evade taxes?
Does it mean that for whom much is given, nothing is expected?
It has nothing to do with WASPS, and everything to do with what we should expect of one another, our fellow citizens.
555
Great comment. I think a sense of duty to “country and God” are what are missing. During WWl and WWll the WASP young men felt it was their responsibility and duty to volunteer to fight. That sense of responsibility for the “greater good”is missing today at all levels of society.
16
@V like many of our country's problems, in the 1980s, there was a shift in attitudes from seeing ourselves as citizens, to seeing ourselves as taxpayers. As citizens, we share responsibility for the welfare of our country as a whole. As taxpayers, we are interested primarily in paying less in taxes, and getting more in services.
29
You are a good citizen!
11
I very much disagree with the idea of an American aristocracy- that being said, there is truth to saying that the typical American meritocrat is born on third base, and is told they hit a grand slam.
For instance, consider the demographics of many of the top universities. While there might be a number of wealthy donor children, from my own experience, a significant portion of the student body tends to come from well-educated upper middle class families. These students might rest assured they earned their positions, unlike those whose parents paid millions, but that does not mean that they got their on their own. It is significantly easier to have the qualifications to get into these schools when you have parents who know how the process works, and fork out thousands for summer SAT prep and personal statement advisors.
A certain sense of entitlement comes from believing you are the only one responsible for your success, and that a piece of paper alone can prove your worthiness (case in point: Trump, who chooses to portray himself as a meritocrat, although he had the benefit of a donor legacy father). After all, the barriers are down- if you didn't succeed, it is because of your own failures.
Meritocracy is great in principle, but in practice can merely give a veneer of legitimacy to a new hereditary aristocracy.
23
@Nick So what's your preference, to reward those who haven't succeeded? You can't fault someone from having been raised with a good education. Rather, the goal has to be to improve educational opportunities for everyone.
@Larry Figdill Personally, I don't know what the answer is, but I know that it begins with a degree of self awareness that our current form of meritocracy is in part hereditary. Those who succeed should be rewarded, but also recognize that the playing field was not entirely equal.
I'm not calling for legislative action or policy changes from universities- more of a general attitude shift. For instance, it's much easier to look down on economically-disadvantaged individuals if you firmly believe that everyone had the same shot.
This is about the myth of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. Of course people want to own their success, and they should to an extent. The problem is when people born on third base believe that they are 100% self made, and believe anyone else could have done the same with only brains and hard work.
I was skeptical, but this turned out to be very thoughtful - once I figured out that the author's meaning of "meritocracy" is limited only to the ability of non-WASPs to ascend through higher education to leadership roles.
Certainly, a true meritocracy - in which the most effective people led - would be best, as that effectiveness would have to include social responsibility, by definition. Clearly that is not what happens. The privileged still reign without necessarily deserving to do so.
There is something to be said for an aristocracy that actually maintains its standards and is respected by and porous to the rest: we don't want the passengers flying the plane. We've lost this in government, science, and academia, in that "elites" who know what they are doing are now frowned upon by anti-intellectual masses.
Thanks for the article. It's an interesting take on it that the problem involves diversification of the elite, in that the newcomers brought ambition but not the historical luxury of stewardship. In retrospect it should have been obvious that diversification would not solve anything, as by the very argument for equality, all people are equally susceptible to corruption and blind, reckless ambition.
19
Ross, I think this is all well and good as an historical exercise, but I'm not sure it applies to today.
Many who comment here, including myself, rail against the rise of plutocracy in America, as the gap between rich and poor coincides with the ability of the wealthy to donate untold amounts of "dark money" to political parties.
Hey, you can't call the Kochs, Aldelsons, Tom Styer, Mike Bloomberg, or any of the rich and powerful an "aristocracy" or even a "meritocracy" per se. And yet they have an outsized role in government whether or not they run for office, largely because of their money--certainly not by dint of their education or old money family instilled "noblesse oblige."
Instead of writing about classes and groups and whether the old or new guard was more socially worthy because of self knowledge, why not tackle the growing problem of those who use their wealth to support politicians who will help them make more of it by passing pro-wealth economic policies?
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@ChristineMcM “historical exercise” or white male supremacist fairy tale? The Kochs et al are as surely an aristocracy as any. Do they own the Presidency, the Senate, the Court? If a President can’t be indicted doesn’t that describe aristocratic privilege?
I fear the appraisal of the relative merits of aristocracy and meritocracy proffered by Mr. Douthat is a purely academic, if not wistfully blinkered, one. Rule by any particular sort of people according to vague principles tends to whet the power of the particulars and dampen the principles. It is indeed an advantage for a ruling class to know who and what they are, but a necessity to justify the process of how and why they got there in terms ability, piety and grace. Once justified, the ascent of the small privileged class must be circumscribed; after all, if everyone is privileged what's the point? Sooner or later, the point becomes to consolidate the privilege, and the clear advantage in that undertaking lies in the ruling class controlling access: knowing who and what they aren't.
It seems to me that the demos of any democracy can be as easily usurped through either the myth of pure merit or the nonsense of nobility, whether born or bred. So let's not conflate the notion of noblesse oblige, predicated as it is on entirely undeserved entitlement, with the idea of social responsibility, nor confuse the virtue of merit with the hubris of glory. In a republic we are indeed destined to be governed by a relative small , in theory, elite. But we neglect our own responsibilities and lose our rights as citizens by allowing a class or specific subset of the populace to consolidate too much power and privilege, and thereby rule rather than govern.
6
Good Lord, I never thought this would happen, but I think Douthat has written a very trenchant column with which I whole-heartedly agree.
In brief, our present meritocracy has been tremendously harmful to our country. It has given us a small cadre of leaders from both parties who pretty much all went to Ivy League schools and whose thought-processes are remarkably similar. It has given us a Supreme Court with a cookie-cutter conservative (and incidentally Catholic) majority.
Party affiliation doesn't always make a difference, which is why the same people who tanked the economy under Dubya were hired by Obama to recreate the status quo ante.
As long as our government is made up of the "best people" from the best schools, it (the government) is going to treat the rest of us like peasants. Just look at what Hillary Clinton said about people who didn't vote for her if you doubt it.
15
@Vesuviano To be fair, Hilary said:
"You know, just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable. But thankfully they are not America."
Clinton then went on to explain that the other basket of Trump supporters are people who "feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."
Not at all a Hillary fan or supporter, but what she said was nuanced. And her comment was pretty much acurate.
So if we use that particluar comment to criticize misguided "elites", the hoi polloi must get it right too.
@Almighty Dollar
Regarding Mrs. Clinton, my post makes it clear that she spoke after the election. I was referencing the following remarks that she made in India in March of this year. The actual full quote is from the Washington Postr:
“If you look at the map of the United States, there's all that red in the middle where Trump won,” Clinton said. “I win the coast. I win, you know, Illinois and Minnesota — places like that.”
She went on: “But what the map doesn't show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's gross domestic product. So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.”
Then she turned to Trump's voters: “And his whole campaign — 'Make America Great Again' — was looking backward. You know, you didn't like black people getting rights; you don't like women, you know, getting jobs; you don't want to, you know, see that Indian American succeeding more than you are — you know, whatever your problem is, I'm gonna solve it."
Mrs. Clinton appeared to me to be very bitter and to ignore that she was part of a status quo that had let millions of Americans down.
Manners or at least civility. Respect. Altruism. Optimism.
We sure don't need a return to the aristocracy.
11
It is hard to appreciate this column comparing the old aristocracy with the new meritocracy in this era of Washington kakistocracy. But I agree with some of Mr. Douthat's points: for all its failings, old WASP aristocracy had no trouble acknowledging its privilege, and may have been much better at giving back to society than the current elites are.
13
So, if he had his way, there would be a Catholic elite in charge across the Americas. I suppose it would make the rules based on the teachings of the Vatican and the infallible Pope (well, the ones he agrees with who are thus more infallible than the others). This would be the natural order, the Catholic religion being the best and correct one. Other religions would have some kind of tolerated status, but would be excluded from the elite, and I have a feeling that some religions would be too "Out there" to even be among the tolerated.
I actually agree with Ross that at least the WASP elite was honest enough to admit it was an elite. Political Islamists are another group that at least acknowledge their worldview.
8
I'm not sure that aristocrats per se would necessarily be inclined to question their legitimacy and so try to live up to their status. Historically this might be true of the WASPs because aristocracy is contrary to our country's founding principals. Generally aristocrats think they're anointed by god and operate like Old Testament kings. Not dissimilar to what we have currently.
4
Ross' opinion pieces since Bush 41's passing have been well thought out and reasoned, but many readers seem to be missing the key points.
One is that what we now refer to as meritocracy may not be as meritocratic as those on top believe that it is, and that this leads to leaders no less corrupt or abusive than those of the previous ruling classes, but without the sense of noblesse oblige that the ruling class of yore aspired to, and at times represented, particularly through upper class persons volunteering for military service in the absence of conscription. In this way, Ross paints our current leadership class as very much like the pigs who overthrew Farmer Jones in Orwell's Animal Farm.
Many readers also seem to be missing the point of who the WASPs Ross describes were. For a more complete elaboration of who this class was, or is, one might try reading Richard Hofstadter's 1966 book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, which described the vast regional differences in culture in (white) America, which overlapped not only with geography, but the degree of formal training and education required to be a member of the church clergy of the group in question (ie Episcopalian or Presbyterian, but not Pentecostal or Baptist.) In short, Ross refers to WASPs, but what he really is describing is the northeastern patrician class, whose roots were often in New England, and whose money was often at least partially inherited. Most white Protestants are not part of this class.
13
@Middleman MD
Your point is accurate and well-taken.
@Middleman MD Mr Mueller is a good example of an aristocrat who has chosen service to his country for decades.
I see parallels to the old saw about the difference between capitalism and communism; in capitalism, men exploit their fellow citizens; in socialism, it's the exact opposite. Whether you say it with a phony Russian accent or not, good leadership requires good people, not good breeding. It's built into the American dream. Meritocrats with humble beginnings (Obama, Clinton, on back to Lincoln) did well save the constant obstruction they faced from aristocrats fearing they were losing control. I don't believe that people who have taken advantage of social mobility based on merit to grasp the levers of power simply don't have the class to even consider being stewards of the unwashed masses. I believe instead the big problem is that too many aristocrats have been taught greed and short cuts and entitlement and skipped cotillion
15
One key difference between new elites (whatever it is) and Old WASP aristocracy: the new elites are globalized "citizens of the world." They have more in common with their peers in other nations than with fellow citizens "below" them. They have homes all over the world. The WASP aristocracy, of course, took us through two world wars and into the Cold War--when "the best and the brightest" (in David Halberstam's classic book of that title) began taking over. Thanks to WWI, the Great Depression, WWII and Cold War, The WASP aristocracy was still a creature of--and loyal to--the nation state. They were patriots who fought for their country--George H.W. Bush, for example. All that seems quaint and dated to the new elites.
5
@Stephanie Wood Very good points. Of course, WASP establishment far more internationally oriented than rest of nation. But today's global elites, thanks to the web, jet travel, globalized markets simply live in their globalized domain all the time and know nothing of what's going on with middle and working class Americans. Nor do they care. That's how Trump got elected.
Well, Ross, you haven't done a very good job of extricating yourself from your perceived position. Whatever label you choose to ascribe to the ruling class, whatever ideals you ascribe to them, whether you define it by good manners or net worth, it is a thinly applied veneer over voracious greed and lust for power.
It is tedious to see any class or group defined by the qualities of its exceptions. We can look at the examples of the work of Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt (rightfully ignoring the negatives) or the philanthropy of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet (rightfully ignoring the sources of their wealth) and build a narrative of the value of politicians or billionaires. But politicians and billionaires as a class conform to more meretricious behaviors.
Where it all breaks down is that members of the ruling classes all believe in inheritance – that their wealth, power and/or nobility will perforce be passed on to their progeny. Hence the creation of dynastic houses, which usually are only interested in conserving their power and privilege – usually with disastrous results. Concomitantly, they severely limit the gateways to that privilege, usually to people who are not threatening to their self-image. This keeps the "masses" ignorant, with an inability to understand the corridors of power: a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Catholic? not so much. (Hey, you put it out there.)
19
I would beg to differ with Ross on the issue of meritocracy. Meritocracy refers to the idea of promoting the person with the best credentials. What are the credentials under consideration? It is never a single measure like wealth or running speed or beauty. Personal integrity and empathy are always considerations for promotions based on merit. The best songwriter in the world will always be able to sell music. But that person will not be a member of the elites if he or she is a bigot.
7
Instead of mourning for a bygone era (which Mr. Douthat burnishes well beyond its original worth) why not teach the civic values of community and public service and include more humanities in educational curriculums? The problem isn't the loss of WASP dominance...it's the slash and burn ethos embodied by far too many of our leaders in both government and industry.
21
it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile. (Hey, you asked.)
*********
Catholic aristocracy is all male. But you know that. How's it working out?
95
@Vanessa Hall...you have to remember, the average Catholic convert is a bit too fervent, florid almost, in his thinking. I'm Catholic, and understand that the current Catholic hierarchy is in incredible disarray. The Catholic intellectual landscape is a shambles, a smoking ruin in search of any kind of coherent unity of ideas at all. I find the idea of a "Catholic aristocracy" to be jaw-dropping, to say the least. Ross doesn't get any of this; his focus is pretty much just on his own ideas. So for me at least it gets funny, in a really sour sort of way.
10
@Vanessa Hall
Not only male but with a significant percentage of perverted individuals, not to mention incredible wealth.
Really, Ross? The history of the institution, not the the values it was supposed to promote, is pretty checkered. What evidence can you muster that would indicate that this institution would provide exemplary leadership.
3
Could mandatory public service help to breach societal insularity, perhaps also reversing the accompanying demise of civic sensibility?
11
@smartypants-like bringing back The Draft?
1
It seems difficult to agree or to disagree with Mr. Douthat’s contentions absent some social goal or objective. If the objective is to maintain wealth and power, there is little difference to the outsider in terms of sharing wealth and power—though some may argue that the trickle down effects of the meritocracy provide for a higher standard of living than the aristocrat model. So, the debate ought to be over what we are trying to achieve. Do we want to maximize economic prosperity, or perhaps minimize inequality—perhaps at the expense of maximizing wealth. And, over what time periods. I think the labor movement in the last century showed the benefits of the masses achieving purchasing power, only to go off course as it did not spend its political power wisely. But I digress. Defining national objectives is not easy, and implementation likely impractical. Still, I think it necessary to try lest we buy into another charlatan promising to make our nation great again only to find the swamp has been replenished with reptiles—amoral being incapable of sin.
10
Words matter. The US is not a meritocracy. It's been a cronyism encrusted nepotistic money mad favor trading plutocracy since the mid 1980s and is becoming ever more so. It is very good at one thing though - convincing the general population that even with all its evident manifold flaws the current American system is the best that can be hoped for. This masterful stroke of self serving propaganda having succeeded the vast "meritless" swath of the population silently suffers in cowed silence clinging to their reality TV and corn syrup-based comestibles. Case in point the term "populist" which while defined as "an adherent of a political party seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people" has nonetheless in the America of 2018 been rendered toxic. Meanwhile, our non-democracy claims it's war all the time lead with the military foreign policy is based on "democracy-promotion" and our economic system that privatizes big finances profits while socializing its losses is the best of all possible worlds. Clearly, for some people it is.
52
I think the United States was an oligarchy before Trump rolled into town. I had an interesting conversation with a customer who informed me that it is now a kakistocracy - which means it is ruled by the LEAST qualifed people to run a government (i.e. totally incompetent morons, lol). Sounds accurate to me!! We'll see if the Dems turn the ship around in 2019.
@Belascou
Awesome ... comment more, please!
I grew up in Douthat Utopia, it was Quebec it was however not multiracial. For myself it was the worst possible world. My world existed six hours south of my Jewish Ghetto a city of rich and poor, black and white , believers and nonbelievers, a city with a statue that welcomed all. My mother was born in Montreal and grew up in its Ghetto, my father was born in Poland and grew up a Polish Jew not a Jew from Poland.
I went to Protestant school and understood nothing of of its ethos except for an incident where the Vice Principal lost her mind because my breathe smelled of garlic after lunch because both my mother and father insisted on real food.
I am older, with diminished eyesight and have access to our small town's one supermarket but there is enough in our small town market that makes a trip to an oriental, Persian, Mid Eastern, Jewish, European Deli or Italian supermarket a once a year thing.
I like my new Quebec where everything is questioned. I prefer defending that people have the right to wear crucifixes, veils, turbans, hijabs and yarlmikes instead asking why my child sing must hymns and pledge allegiance to a flag and affirm the existence of an invisible cloud being. I like empty churches and filled libraries.
120
@Montreal Moe
This is sadly a good example of what Douthat would likely refer to as virtue signalling. My ethnic background is no different from yours, and yet I am able to appreciate Ross' perspective and well thought out opinions without intimating that he is advocating for my oppression.
Ross obviously made a joke and is not seriously making a case that Catholicism become the rule of any land. Just as his previous piece on WASP culture was misinterpreted as an endorsement of white supremacy by those who made little effort to understand what they read (or because they only read the headline), I have to wonder if the real injustice you suffered growing up in Quebec schools was that reading comprehension was never a skill that was taught or emphasized.
5
I think society is better off with filled churches AND filled libraries.
2
@Middleman MD
I like nothing better than sitting down and talking religion, politics, literature and history. I have learned to listen despite coming from a talking not listening culture.
It is hard explaining that in 1775 Quebec was just another North American British colony and the Montreal Gazette was just another Benjamin Franklin newspaper. Quebec was Catholic and the Quebec Act making Catholics equal was the fifth and final Intolerable Act.
I know Douthat's history and know his Catholicism is recent. My father received a Jesuit education despite his being a Jew.
I know the history of Connecticut and the birth of American "conservatism".
I grew up in Montreal where because we were not Catholic we went to Protestant school where because of the WASPs we had the best schools in North America. I would have had difficulty anywhere as I am learning disabled and could never write legibly or coherently and my memory works differently.
I always understood what I read because I learned context is all important.
I understand Ross because he is the son of a poet but I also understand the difference between the Catholicism of recent converts and the Catholicism of 25 generations. I am a fan of the new pope because it is 2018 and it is about time for my brother Jesus to be heard and understood .
In 1775 about 17% of the British colonists could read and write which is about the same percentage as can read and write with comprehension today.
2
Douthat understands meritocracy is no advance over WASP aristocracy, that it plucks a few high -achieving individuals from the masses to join the academic, corporate, and political illuminati. I taught in an urban minority high school and saw a handful of students make it into the elite and leave their communities, with the disdain of those left behind. What he doesn’t understand is the only solution is economic democracy. Raise the working class, minorities, and women as a whole through guaranteed federal jobs, equal pay, universal health care, free college, public housing, and make the banks and corporations pay.
35
This is for other commentators. This is not my opinion, but I just wanted to show that similar phenomena are happening in other cultures and countries.
I was born in India, to a privileged, highly educated Brahmin (upper caste) family which was also well known in our city for consistently producing doctors for > 100 years. I grew up knowing Sanskrit (which in West would be Latin or Greek), knowing my math (even though I was not good at it), going to good schools, and in an overall atmosphere for universal acceptance by school friends, family friends, teachers, shopkeepers, cops, etc. At the same time we were taught to treat people of poorer classes with respect. Many folks from this class, including my ancestors,were key drivers of social reform to uplift lower castes and women.
That world, and that privileged class is gone. It had been going away since Independence and establishment of democracy in India.
Now, in India, the 'high caste' are the rich, irrespective of your ancestry. And you are rich if you have 'it' in you. The lower castes of the old now enjoy privileges that they truly deserve. Women are seen in top jobs like never before. But the adults and kids of these new high castes are probably much more arrogant and entitled than we were.
I like this world. But I miss the old world too. RD is going through the same motions.
41
I hear what you’re saying, but you omit two things: the caste system was started by the Brahmins, and there are plenty of examples of Brahmins being the worst offenders when it came to caste-based crime.
I am thankful that your family was not one of such inciters or bad karma, but unfortunately in this case, the general case, not the exception, is the rule.
1
This is getting quite convoluted--however Mr. Douthat personally sees his constructs. He can define the fields for himself, but there should be a recognition as to who is setting the rules, who gets to set the parameters of merit.
Diversity and meritocracy are not necessarily mutually exclusive--although like so many other constructs there are arguments to the contrary. Problems come as we the people try to decide who gets what, or those more lucky and privileged try to hang on to what they have.
If meritocracy leads to the upper 1% of the economic pyramid controlling 40% of the assets, then the meritocracy is destructive. But it does not have to be that way.
Where do we go with these arguments? Is anyone clear? Does aristocracy imply wisdom or sound leadership? It depends.
6
You ask a question at the end: does meritocracy imply wisdom or sound judgment? You didn't answer your question. Your question reminds me of another article I just read today about the lack of success of straight A students. It seems that gifted people who follow their own path don't make good grades in school, but they do better in life than those who do. I think as a society we put too much emphasis on studying and making A's in school, and too little emphasis in learning how to find answers to basic questions in society. I know from experience in class that it's easy to read and then regurgitate what you read on a test, but it doesn't teach you how to solve problems. If we want a better society, we need to teach children how to solve problems better.
10
@Jeni
Thanks for the comment. My end-question was actually about aristocracy, but shifting to meritocracy seems reasonable.
I had no intention of answering my own questions, in spite of some opinions that could change as I learn more. Most analyses I've seen are prone to sweeping generalizations.
Our existing and evolving meritocracy (hence aristocracy) mainly focuses on the upper 10% of the economic ladder, and ignores much else: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/ . One highlighted statement from that essay:
"The meritocratic class has mastered the old trick of consolidating wealth and passing privilege along at the expense of other people’s children."
One scary element in all this is that in the past a major dislocation--large scale war or revolution, state collapse, or catastrophic plagues--was required to redistributed wealth. Can we find a better way forward? Hence more questions. Those people who insist we can do this without elites (particularly intellectual ones) are very likely wrong.
4
We don’t need an “elite” class to give us direction.
Your hero envy is showing. You badly want a Republican hero. You won’t find it in the late President Bush. You will find it in the late, former Massachusetts Governor Francis Sargent.
He was accessible, friendly, and asked pertinent, incisive questions. He made important changes for the State’s environmental future, set up an appeals court and staffed it with exemplary legal minds for judges. He stood by the Racial Imbalance Act and stood by the Federal court order about busing. In the 10th Mountain Division, during WW II, he was awarded a Bronze Star and then a Purple Heart when wounded. A fine Republican hero. Put his picture on your nightstand.
Next, from the 1870s through the 1970s, the YMCA boards of directors were staffed by the leading business people in each community. Why? It wasn’t as much saving souls as being a post-school center for young men to associate with, develop good character habits, and become solid, contributing employees and community members. Few of those board members developing their community futures would be called WASP elite.
Last, in Wikipedia look up the Socialist Sunday School movement, an outgrowth of the horrendous exploitation of British dockworkers by British “elite.” Read the sidebar stating “The Socialist Commandments.” There are 10. None say anything about government run businesses. They are commandments for decent living together. No WASP elites needed here, either.
10
@Liam Jumper Er, Frank Sargent, a great governor no doubt, attended Noble & Greenough before heading to MIT...I think it would be fair to place him among the WASPs to say the least...
Where do the Koch brothers fit in here? As graduates of MIT it would seem they are part of the meritocracy. But they are major philanthropists as well. They are advocates for criminal justice reform and have made substantial donations to hospitals and the arts. Every once in a while I will watch a programme I like for which they (David mostly) are sponsors, such as Ken Burn's Vietnam. I get heartburn but there it is.
if they are aristocrats who think they are serving the best interests of America and Americans, then they make a strong case for the corruption of aristocrats who offer a little window dressing. if they are meritocrats they are not totally without a sense of obligation.
The problem is not aristocrats, meritocrats, or democrats. it is greed. Always has been and always will be except for very rare occasions such as the years following WW 2.
20
@Allan
Some contributions by the Koch family are beneficial.
But donations from the Koch family (and other wealthy donors) have had a profound impact on the think tanks and economic departments of major universities. This impact has effectively marginalized and eliminated discussion of New Deal type policies, from our mainstream media.
Those in the media don't want to upset their advertisers or owners on the economic issues. And even if the media try to be objective, decades of influence by donors - to think tanks, lobbyists, economic departments of universities, etc, makes them very dismissive of economic views - however sound - that go against the status quo consensus. The examples of what happens to anyone who does dare to dissent (ostracism - or even becoming unemployable), ensures conformity to economic dogma. This dogma creates ever greater inequality, and the long term economic (industrial) decline of our nation - due to policies driven by short term profits, and inattention to national interests or worker interests.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mercatus_Center
"the Koch family has contributed more than thirty million dollars to George Mason University, much of which has gone to the Mercatus Center...Rob Stein described the Mercatus Center as "ground zero for deregulation policy..."
"According to The Guardian in 2010, it "now fills the role once played by the economics department at Chicago University as the originator of extreme neoliberal ideas."
26
I think this entire piece is really about laying the groundwork for arguing that a Catholic aristocracy would be OK because having the “right” ideas, beliefs, and pedigree is more important than having the right qualifications, skills, and knowledge. So, for example, following the Bible is more important than following science, or believing myths is more important than believing facts.
24
@Dan
Concur: Every column Douthat writes is "really about laying the groundwork for arguing that a Catholic aristocracy would be OK."
It grows tiresome posting comments disputing his nonsense. For my New Year's Resolution, I've decided that every time Douthat publishes a column promulgating his reactionary views, I'm going to make a donation (above and beyond what I already would have donated) to an organization that provides safe and respectful reproductive health care, including abortion services, to low income women.
I don't do social media, but if I did I'd call my campaign @DollarsAgainstDouthat, and I'd encourage others to donate to their own preferred progressive causes.
1
Ross STILL doesn't know what a real meritocracy is.
The fight against public education in America--especially from Reagan onward--halted much of the movement towards a meritocratic nation.
220
@DD - How right you are. And if we can ever get the unions to stop fighting the attempts to provide the best possible public education, something might finally start to change!
4
@Doug
this is sarcasm ? how do the unions fight education? By not firing teachers - is that what you are saying? Because if it is I highly doubt that could be the underlying reason. If there is just one.
4
Admission is no where near enough. Democracy cannot survive a form of capitalism where the vast majority of gains go to the rich. Even if you know you were born on third base and admit to it, if the system places in privilege the way you earn money and your mantra is that people are costs to be minimized, there is no impact of the self-understanding and admission. The system needs to be changed.
15
The system is whoever is working it. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that capitalism in and of itself is neither bad nor good, it's how people use it that makes it moral or immoral.
6
This is covered in Luke 12:48:
“For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much is required.”
Whether aristocracy or meritocracy, both have a duty to serve those less fortunate, a notion largely absent from those who desire riches and/or status, especially this President.
106
@Ask Better Questions
An apt comparison in that regard is the charitable foundation of Lebron James. It financed the building of a "public school" which guarantees college tuition at local Akron College to all who graduate. Trump? His foundation is about gaming the system to enrich himself.
6
Personal good deeds versus doing good deeds through government (if voting for a socialist who takes money from someone else to give it to who he/she/it thinks needs it count as a good deed). This biblical passage is about what you personally can do and it is not restricted to money. For most people, spending their own time to help people in need in their family and communities is a much more difficult thing to give (we value our time more than other people’s money). Also, you do not give to the government, the government takes it from you. Therefore, when it comes to government, do not confuse Jesus with Karl Marx who said “from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs.” Or Jesus with Robin Hood (Prince of Thieves) who took from the governing class to give to the poor. If you are not depriving yourself of something you value to give to others (family members included, old parents, wife, husband, children), then you are falling short of what is asked of you. Voting democrat or republican won’t save you.
We tell the daughter of Ivy League grads who goes to the very best of schools, attends the Ivy league herself, and finds herself with a six figure job in her 20s and enormous power to affect her society that she owes nothing to that society because she earned it. After all, she worked hard to get into Yale.
.
Douthat's point isn't that this woman isn't the best and brightest of our society, that she hasn't been trained to be a leader. She certainly has. Douthat wants that woman to know that she owes her success in part to being born into the meritocratic aristocracy. That aristocracy needs to feel that they have a moral obligation to not use their power to transfer ever greater wealth and power to the members of the aristocracy. In particular, they must try much harder to create a path to wealth and power for those who did not have cello and gymnastic lessons each day after attending private school. They must treat those with less education and culture with respect, and avoid calling them deplorable.
.
With Trump's election we see the strength of an anti-intellectual, anti-education movement which rejects the privileges of the meritocratic elite, and challenges whether that elite is leading us well, particularly post-2008. The worst mistake would be to refuse to acknowledge that there is a meritocratic elite, that this elite is firmly in place with low social mobility in our society, and that this elite has often failed to act in the best interests of the country.
79
Mr. Douthat sets up straw men then knocks them down to make his point. His "meritocracy" sounds a lot like the WASP elite, except more diverse in race, religion and gender. The writer assumes that the meritocracy will behave like the old aristocracy, giving its children (and perhaps siblings and spouses) unearned privileges, as did the old elite. A true meritocracy would guard against that, because privilege based on birth or relationship is not meritocratic at all.
Mr. Douthat would be better advised to ask whether we know what merit is. Or do we set up standards that do not really define those who deserve to lead, but justify a new aristocracy that is not as deserving as it pretends to be, and perhaps not more fit than the old elite.
25
Somehow RD seems to believe that if only WASPs had maintained standards we could have avoided the 60's and lived in a perpetual glow of 1950's noblesse oblige. But then the 60's happened and the sexual revolution, civil rights, a and a desire to avoid perma-war blew that fantasy to smithereens. No WASPs did not decide to "abandon" their privilege it just became ridiculous to maintain in the face of a rapidly changing world that left them behind.
As I read through the rest of the column I wondered at the cascade of strange statements. Yes I know this is an opinion piece, but still are we to believe that somehow WASPs were paragons of virtue only waiting for the moment to let a few more African-Americans, Jews and women into their club as long as "upper class virtues" were maintained. And what does an encampment of African-Americans on Martha's Vineyard have to do with anything. That and cherry-picking Sheryl Sandberg as an example of woman gone bad in management pretty much sealed the deal for poor argument.
But putting that aside, somehow we are to believe that 10s of thousands of white New England prep school boys graduated before WWII were the backbone of civilization when in reality they were as diverse as any meritocracy in their moral fiber. But, "they knew who they were" ends on a truly weak note of weakness. Perhaps RD should write where his heart is, the Catholic aristocracy of the Americas. Heck it brought Chile Pinochet , what could go wrong.
33
Long story short: aristocracy good, meritocracy bad. I never met a man who couldn't talk himself into anything.
24
In many ways the "meritocracy" of today is smooth talk covering unprincipled international greed.
23
Oh give me a break, Ross! The "aristocracy" of the 19th century consisted largely of robber barons who never hesitated to call out the National Guard against workers who dared strike for an 8 hour day, an end to child labor, a two-day weekend, and a living wage.
643
@Martha Shelley
Yeah, them Robber Barons such as Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller. Such despicable WASP's!
1
@westernman:
Exactly!
What's a little Union Bustin'
via machine gun bullets
(and massacres)
when you get Libraries!
Be. Grateful.
14
"...with occasional defectors like F.D.R...."
We need not just occasional but regular defectors like F.D.R., who embodied the best sense of the term "noblesse oblige," and acted nobly towards those who are less privileged, Social Security arguably being his best initiative.
136
As Mr. Douthat hints, it is a case of the new boss same as the old boss.
Only today, the new elite have generally avoided military service and are making themselves rich by moving jobs to countries with low wages thus creating a race to the bottom without regard to what it has done to our society.
At least the old order had a sense of obligation to the USA even if they made sure they & theirs got first dibs on most everything.
44
@Bob in Pennsyltucky
Which non-essential war that the US has fought exclusively since 1945 do you think would have been a good crucible of experience for future leaders? I would never vote, for example, for anyone that signed up voluntary for GWB's Iraq War.
13
@Djt
Actually - which war since 1945 was 'essential'?
"...the typical meritocrat is born on third base, hustles home, and gets praised as if he just hit a grand slam….This spirit discourages inherited responsibility and cultural stewardship; it brushes away the disciplines of duty..."
I completely reject the notion that "meritocrats" don't embrace "duty", that statement is nothing short of preposterous on it's face and completely lacks evidence.
Because of Sheryl Sandberg's missteps and in view of other high profile Silicon Valley fiascos I'm compelled to conclude that the historically entrenched aristocracy is more "duty bound"?
That's a completely fallacious, anecdotal apples vs. oranges argument.
Wall Street and big business have buckets of blood on their hands to rival the more spectacular, modern day moral flame outs of Silicon Valley. They just did things more "quietly" back in the "MAGA" days and were better at "cover ups".
Competence should always matter, and it should matter in "soft endeavors" like politics as well as the "hard" sciences.
To posit that "merit" should pose an artificial barrier to entry or results in some kind of "mutation" of democratic "self-conception" is laugh out loud funny.
The whole idea of the "WASP aristocracy" as the sole keeper of our nations moral flame is a myth that should be allowed to die, not one that we should mourn.
24
The paradox of scientific and social progress is that it begins with doubt. Until about 500 years ago, progress was glacially slow, because religion had all of the answers (and all of the marbles). Everything belonged to a god and delegated to an earthly monarch and/or religious patriarch. There was no room for doubt or questioning, which resulted in the vast majority of people living as impoverished serfs or slaves.
Once that system began to break apart in Europe, science exploded. Progress lagged in other empires like Imperial China, which survived even the horrors of the Taiping Rebellion of the 19th century, when 20 million died.
Aristocracy is associated with arrogance and social stasis. Breakdowns of old elite societies are no guarantee of progress, but progress requires some breakage of old institutions. The dominance of northeastern. society in American government and Wall street is bound to wane as the global center of gravity shifts from Atlantic to Pacific.
There are also many social, economic and environmental forces that are pulling the different regions of the US apart, such that power may decentralize from Federal to states over time, accelerated by unsustainable Federal deficits.
Forget about antiquated notions of noblesse oblige and the "Father Knows Best" arrogance that implies.
24
@Look Ahead
You raise a key overlooked point: the Ivy walls began to crumble when a tsunami of federal science money began to wash over universities. It became painfully apparent that restricting admission to the Boston Brahmins et al. was going to leave those schools in the dust, stuffed as they were with privileged WASPs (and Buckleys, etc.). Once the walls were breached, the logic of keeping out women and minorities crumbled as well. We are still fighting over the spoils - "legacies" hanging on, Asian-Americans crying foul, etc. Nobody gives up a gravy train without a fight, even if they are terribly well-mannered about it. Watch or read "The Way We Live Now" (Trollope, on Amazon with David Suchet) to see how Trumpian characters have been around since the rise of big tech.
4
There is a reason that the US and western Europe are the choice destinations for immigrants worldwide. Respect for the rights of the underprivileged is particular to western European cultures and their offspring. Although I bet few commenters here will admit or even recognize this, it is obvious to anyone who has lived in third-world countries.
The failure to recognize the contributions of western Europe and its offspring to world social and political culture and the accompanying facile denigration of "white privilege" may allow progressives to pat themselves on the back, but it ignores the basis for the many advantages that those of us lucky enough born in these countries take for granted.
Ross recognizes the sense of social duty that suffused the entire WASP hegemony in this country, and which has sadly disappeared along with that hegemony.
27
@Bill
I don't know if it is that. But as an immigrant who came to America in 50s, there were cerain rules that one was expected to follow to become succesful and it seemed to work. There were no rules where I came from, the Balkans.
Although to paraphrase the line from Goodfellas..."If you didn't follow the rules, you got whacked. Although, if you did follow them, you still might get whacked."
So there is that too.
4
Most humans - not just the noble class - subscribe to noblesse oblige - the obligation to be generous, helpful and charitable to those less fortunate.
WASPs have no specialization in basic humanity above and beyond any other class of human beings.
What has failed America is a lack of leadership ethics in both the aristocracy and the meritocracy.
Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg - both meritocrats - are both ethics-free, unable to recognize their epic TwoFacebook failures as they organ-harvest people's private personal data for sociopathic profits and assist in the flushing of their country down the drain while bribing Congress to not pay attention.
But there was nothing particularly ethical about the Bush family; sure they had decent manners, but the family had a rich record of criminality a la the Iran-Contra pardons, the Silverado Savings and Loan fraud fiasco, Jeb's illegal 1999 purging of the Florida central voter file to help rig the 2000 vote, the Dubya-Cheney and Republican Supreme Court rejection of the will of the 2000 vote, and the Dubya reign of catastrophic error.
With WASPs like the Bush family, who needs enemies ?
The meritocrat Barack Obama and the multicultural Democrats gave tens of millions of Americans decent healthcare in 2010, one of the more distinct acts of noblesse oblige in modern history.
And the WASPy Republican Party cried bloody murder about it.
And today's WASP Party rejects American democracy.
WASPs have nothing to write home about.
735
@Socrates
I added to your list of crimes supporting your statement:
"But there was nothing particularly ethical about the Bush family; sure they had decent manners, but the family had a rich record of criminality"
In 1992 Bush tried to scuttle the Rio Earth Summit about Global Climate Change although it had been established science since the 1930's. https://history.aip.org/climate/timeline.htm
I cited RI Senator Chafee who gave a speech on the Senate floor on that Global Climate Change He said by the 1930's scientific measurements had confirmed the theory that had been proposed in the 19th Century and Senator Chafee had concluded:
“the buildup of greenhouse gases, which threaten to warm the Earth to unprecedented levels. Such a warming could, within the next 50 to 75 years, produce enormous changes in a climate that has remained fairly stable for thousands of years.”
“[T]here is a very real possibility, that man--through ignorance or indifference, or both--is irreversibly altering the ability of our atmosphere to perform basic life support functions for the planet.”
Bush in Rio in 1992 behaved differently than Trump in 2018 in Buenos Ayres only in politeness and personal likability. Both acted as moral weaklings subservient to Exxon and their ilk efforts to discredit of the science on Global Climate Change in order to postpone their inevitable ruination.
.
My post appears was deleted, so I try again.
59
@Socrates. George H W Bush put his own life on the line in combat numerous times, thus enabling Obama to be a meritocrat with other people's money. Don't short change Bush's bravery and dignity
10
@Socrates
Yes, and the way towards more meritocracy is to reverse everything #45's party and the old GOP stand for. ie, higher taxes on the rich, more money for public education, parks, musuems,free universal healthcare etc, ... and, gasp (!), abolishing inheritance.
18
It seems to me that 'meritocracy' implies that a society encourages any member to advance socially and economically through their own efforts/skills/credentials/accomplishments and so on.
Legacy admissions to elite institutions are therefore inherently unfair, but considering the individual's demonstrated skills, achievements and talents are surely meritocratic.
I don't agree that a person who advances through their own efforts should be assumed to be inherently arrogant, uncharitable or uncaring toward others. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and the Bezos family are known for involvement in charitable causes, for example, unlike the Bushes (as far as I am aware).
I personally would prefer an elite comprised and supportive of, secular humanism. Worldwide, the Catholic Church and Evangelical groups are doing much more harm than good.
53
@Cal
Of course the Bushes are involved in charities, is google not working in Maine? Also note that "generous" Bezos is a notorious tax dodger and worker exploiter and Gates conspired to keep the wages of all tech workers down through anti-competition measures. Your examples refute your premise.
5
Are you referring to the Jeff Bezos who does not pay his employees a living wage ? Or the Bill Gates who used his monopoly to squash other people with better ideas in not even unethical but illegal means ? And how about the much longer list like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. etc.
3
Nice shot against Christian religion but if you research and analyze this rationally you will conclude that Catholicism and Protestantism have produced more good than harm on the balance. Hospitals and universities for all, not only the rich or aristocrats, scientific knowledge (yes, they encouraged science. Gregory Mendel, the founder of genetics, was a monk, and so many others, but the story of Galileo is what most people know), and the foundation of the US and Western Democratic Societies. Not perfect with still lots of room for improvement but much better than the scientifically based, atheist, non-religious communist societies which we now totally reject. Their tally: over 100 million people killed in less than a century, billions under oppression, generations lost, a real human tragedy. Nice experiment but with a high human cost.
1
In our contemporary meritocracy It’s not just the WASPy-values men we have lost, but the scores of women who were relegated to the home and the community- where they enriched society greatly in communities of all types. Great citizens frequently have mothers. Schools and churches and community groups and civic organizations have suffered without the level of leadership and participation that was once available to them in the form of women who were not allowed to function in “men’s” jobs.
I am an ardent feminist with degrees from colleges that would not have accepted me as a woman- but I often think that we have never honestly accounted for all the work that has gone undone since women like me became co-breadwinners. I would guess the loss of an available labor force for community life and service also has affected our culture.
159
@Sally Hallie - the underlying problem is the fact that nowadays families need 2 breadwinners not 1; the ideal would be that most families could get to choose whether the man or the woman be the breadwinner.
6
@Sally Hallie - Here's the solution: today's fathers assume half the role formerly carried out by the mothers of the past you idealize (perhaps correctly). Women will never (I hope) be shut out of the professional world again, and, yes, the home and community has suffered. As much as they try to do all they used to do as well as their full-time employment, it's not entirely possible. Fathers: step up. Join your PTOs, do volunteer work, do housework, pack your kids' lunches, be the one to communicate with teachers about your kids' school performance, involve yourselves in your communities, etc.
9
@Sally Hallie
As a 60 year old woman I believe this nostalgic past is mostly just a myth. I grew up in a fairly affluent, but blue collar, neighborhood where few of the mothers worked but my childhood was seemingly no different than our children's, or even less micromanaged than the world our children live in today. Sports was mostly "sand-lot" except for the local little league, lassie league and pop-warner football. Soccer hadn't come on the scene yet in my little town. Few children took dance class, even fewer gymnastics. Organized sports were weeknight events, weekends saved for church and family. We were friendly with our neighbors but our parents didn't socialize. My father golfed and bowled and both of my parents played the weekly game of cards with a neighbor and her extended family. Today you can't drive by a sports field on any given weekend from April through November without seeing a gathering of children playing football, soccer (both spring and fall leagues), baseball, softball. Almost every child takes dance or gymnastics. Their lives are so micro-managed it seems they leave no time for unscripted play. We have Old Home Day, Carols on the Common, a thriving garden club, senior center and other community sponsored organizations, PTA, cub scouts, brownies, boy scouts, girl scouts. No different than the past.
5
“This week I briefly trended on Twitter — a bracing experience for any columnist, because it means that you’ve done your job of provocation a little bit too well.”
While you’re describing the upper levels of the economic elite in America, it would be good to investigate why there is an enormous gulf in perception over what constitutes a ‘booming’ economy where the topi 1% control such a disproportionate amount of wealth.
There is something wrong with the manner in which wealth is distributed and a phony tax cut for the rich isn’t working for the majority of Americans not buying trickle down economics anymore.
The midterm election should be a wake up call that despite the rosy economic scenarios painted in many columns about the economy, there is a new reality that the 1% will need to grasp.
Like one of the peaceful protesting “yellow vests” said about the French economic inequality, “ We want the baguette, not the crumbs.”
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To conservatives, meritocracy doesn’t mean a ruling class of people who were elected for their abilities. It means secular liberals who have the audacity to ignore God and Money and do things for the (ugh) common people.
Some would say that it’s possible for anyone to permeate the current aristocratic class that rules in Washington. A sexually abusive drunk can make it to the Supreme Court. A two-bit sexual predator can get the president’s endorsement for Senator. A man can be elected president of the United States after bragging about groping crotches, as well as having “written” more books than he’s read.
And while one can pretend that WASP culture is diverse and inclusive, White Anglo Saxon Protestant pretty much defines a specific group of people who aren’t RAID, or Rational, African, Immigrant and Democrats. Everyone knows that if you expose a WASP to RAID, they twitch uncontrollably.
Mr. Douthat explains at some length how meritocracies are the source of many evils. Never mind that WASPy Republicans lobby for charter schools, cut funds for public education, economically abandon neighborhoods, lock up as many people of color as the jails will hold and have attitudes about sex that would make Puritans from the 17th Century roll their eyes.
There are good people of every race and creed, or no creed at all. A meritocracy lets them rise to the level where their talents can be recognized and put to good use. Otherwise, anything just might rise to the top.
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@gemli
"White Anglo Saxon Protestant pretty much defines a specific group of people who aren’t RAID, or Rational, African, Immigrant and Democrats. Everyone knows if you expose a WASP to RAID, they twitch uncontrollably."
Brilliant and I laughed out loud.
I would only add that, despite fogging, the WASPs never just go on and DIE as fast as one would like them to!
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@gemli
Gemli, nothing makes me laugh more than your biting wit and cunning turn of phrase.
" Everyone knows that if you expose a WASP to RAID, they twitch uncontrollably."
Absolutely priceless!!!
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@gemli
Hmmm. Ya sounds a tad prejudiced and kinda murderous, "Everyone knows that if you expose a WASP to RAID, they twitch uncontrollably." Not every WASP is Henry the 8th (notably the earliest English Protestant icon).
I will say, though, I've witnessed those who've ascended economically, status-wise ever since Colonial times often become as legacy-oriented as the most brutal aristocrats. People can be nasty.
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The meritocracy dissolved into credentialism - credentialism only obtainable through education/certification requiring indebtedness for people not possessing adequate bank balances, nor able to intern for free.
Indeed, Douthat's professed 'ideals of diversity' seem more in line with what occurred back when the country had vigorous unionism.
Yes, you are correct if you seem to recall that the decline of the middle class roughly coincided with the decline of unions.
As WASPs intended.
(Full disclosure: from a male WASP)
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Very well done and thought provoking piece. Never thought of the downsides of a meritocracy as crisply as your treatment.
More importantly a rational discourse on a difficult topic.
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Ross, have you forgotten there are 7 Ivy league schools? And many other schools that are considered of equal or near equal merit spread throughout the country? This idea that aristocracy spread the wealth regionally and meritocracy doesn't well and truly forgets the past.
And once again, Donald Trump is not only no part of a WASP aristorcracy, he is no part of a meritocracy either! He's just vulgar new money which is quite different.
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@NSH, we need to coin a new term for Trump and his cronies. I suggest mediocracy.
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@michaeltide
Even mediocracy is being too kind. Idiocracy suits him and his ilk much better.
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There so much air here devoid of the oxygen of example and hard information it leaves me breathlessly frustrated.
Which American leaders in the past demonstrated these WASP virtues? You have the House of Morgan, but there was no virtuous WASP aristocracy of political and economic power that held this country together that Douthat identifies here.
Rockefeller was certainly a WASP who was partially motivated by the protestant values Douthat speaks of, but his darker angels held at least as much sway in his development of total monopoly over the oil industry and the railroads.
My sense is that the WASP leaders of the past were motivated by many different angels of light and darkness and that if Douthat could go back in time for a week he'd realize that commitment to the public good by our plutocrats and politicians is more or less the same as it ever was. Ranging from the behavior of Rupert Murdoch to that of Bill Gates and from Donald Trump to Barack Obama.
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Before we can make any case, we need to have truth, reconciliation, and reparations (financial where appropriate, concrete gestures of contrition for the most part).
I've lost my patience with columns like these that are built on a base of lies. The second coming of Jim Crow (the age of Trump) should be the biggest cluestick to anyone who wants to understand how our foundation of original sin is what is keeping us from progress.
2016, the primary and general election, was full of warnings. All went unheeded. Senator Sanders was the target, but every single candidate should have been targeted as well. Meritocracy is only one problem and it has a source that goes way back to our founding. Most of our problems do.
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https://www.rimaregas.com/2016/01/21/ta-nehisi-coates-bernie-sanders-martin-luther-king-socialism-and-reparations-blog42/
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