What They Want

Laura Ingraham's most recent book, Shut Up and Sing, didn't deal with Republican vs. Democrat or conservative vs. liberal, but rather with elites vs. normal Americans. Though her book was published last year, it still fits what's going on, especially in Washington.

Elites want the right to run normal people's lives. Elites want you to see them as God, so you will let them pat you on the head and tell you not to worry yourself about anything as they take control of your life. Elites love Europe, because Europe's elites have had it this way for a long time.

I learned French in school. It's not very useful in Southern California, but what do you do (gallic shrug)? A key piece of information I got in French class has gone a long way toward explaining why Europe's elite system is so much more advanced than ours.

The school system in France (and presumably most of Western Europe) is rigidly structured. At a certain point in the educational process--about the equivalent of late grade school/early middle school here--students are evaluated and assigned to an educational path. One path leads to working class jobs, and the other path leads to college and professional jobs. Once you're placed on your path (you and your family have NO input on the decision), you are stuck there forever. Working class students cannot go to college.

What this fosters in the working class is a certain awe of the educated folks. Those people know more, due to their extensive education, and so they must be more capable of running the nation.
What this fosters in the educated class is a sense of being set apart and above the rabble, and a certainty that they must be more capable of running the nation--and indeed are entitled to run the nation.

The roots of the European class system are deep in the ancient feudal system, where the landed gentry or aristocracy ruled over the peasants. Aside from the political trappings, not much has changed.

Except in America. Our country was founded by people who fled the strictures of European life, people who believed that all people--normal people--are capable not only of running their own lives, but of running a nation.

The problem is that there are people who were born here who somehow managed to grow up believing they know better than the rabble and that they're entitled to reshape our nation to suit their beliefs. These are the elites.

We find elites in the judiciary, declaring rights that never existed and citing international law as a trump over the Constitution. We find elites in the universities, calling on America to cease being unique and to bow down her sovereignty to internationalism in the form of the UN. We find elites in Congress, especially in the Senate, obstructing or pushing to make our nation's sructure more like the socialism that has failed or is failing Europe's countries.

We must not give in. There is even hope, in the latest French and Dutch votes on the EU constitution, that Europe itself may be coming around to America's professed ideals. Mark Steyn's column for the London Telegraph gives an exquisite description of elite thinking, at the same time he gives the picture of the rabble's growing dissatisfaction with those elites.

May the rabble win--both in Europe and in America.