The ideology of the bipartisan elite is one of a professional administrative class, overly certain of their judgment, stubborn in their views but relatively timid in their actions. They meander but do not lead.
In Part V, conclusions.
ADDENDUM:
Federalist X ( see comments) had an excellent example – I’m envious actually as I’d never heard it – of liberal education and the Eastern Establishment. While the substance of his comment wil have to be dealt with in Part V. Federalist X did suggest loooking at Dan of tdaxp’s series on Liberal Education. Here it is:
Part II: Liberation and Rulesets
Part IV: The Mitochondrial Peace
Page 4 of 4 | Previous page
Anonymous:
April 7th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Mark, I usually like what you say because it’s a different viewpoint from prevailing wisdom.
But you’ve drunk the Kool-Aid on this one. You’re attacking that strawman that President Bush constructed: them intelletuuls who don’t know what us common folks know and who prefer an abstract stability to fighting for the right.
You were going in the right direction with this: Today’s politically bifurcated elite does have a “vital consensus” on strategic national interests but it is weak, representing the lowest common denominator that can be reached by two factions being pulled apart by the gravitational force of partisanship.
Part of that partisanship is the insistence on a know-nothing approach by some so-called conservatives. It resonates for them from science and personal life up through justifying attacking other nations because they are “evil.” Some of those chickens are returning politically in the immigration debate.
Our leaders (of all stripes) would do us a great service if they would use reasoning to a greater degree than emotion in putting forth their programs.
CKR
mark:
April 7th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
LOL ! I knew this post would elicit criticism – if it helps Cheryl I expect some brickbats from my conservative friends as well.
I like intellectuals, I am one after all, but the bipartisan foreign policy elite are often, in their own way, as ideological as the neocons. They don’t welcome challenges to critically reexamine the received wisdom of their premises.
Yes, the far right is part of the problem in terms of polarization that leaves a shrinking, weakly held, consensus. It takes two to tango.
Dave Schuler:
April 7th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
I suspect that our disagreement is less in recognizing that there is an Elite than in my conviction that they’re not elite.
BTW, Mark, I’ve made substantial progress in my Wave Theory series. I should be posting the next installment over the weekend and the remaining installments thereafter (five in all).
Dave Schuler:
April 7th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Hamiltonianism (mercantilism) and Wilsonianism (internationalist optimism) are both elite viewpoints. The American public are overwhelmingly populist (Jacksonian) in their attitudes on foreign policy.
Carlos:
April 7th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
You were doing so well with this series…. Frankly I think that you overestimate the importance of the European left intellectuals and underestimate other factors. Things like the exodus of Southern Democrats (which created a much more ideological partisan dynamic) and the new role of the USA as the dominant superpower probably have more weight.
mark:
April 7th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Hi Dave,
Perhaps it is the prevalence of Mead’s taxonomy as a spectrum of viewpoints among the elite that contributes to the weak consensus, along with Left-Right divisions.
Excellent on the Wave theory – I look forward to it.
Carlos,
You are correct that there are many factors at play and I think you named some of them.
There’s a limit to the possible sweep of a blog post. I had to cut a section on Atlanticism vs, Pacific Rim orientation and Nixon to make this reasonable in size so I chose to focus on education and ideology. Is there more here to it, yes, I think that is correct but I’d need a lot more space to address your concerns, an article at least.Perhaps a small book.
Dan tdaxp:
April 7th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
The Eastern Establishment is dieing. Good.
For a century these people have our nation. Nationalists — Gaullists really — they worked to undermine our Constitution and destroy our Federal Republic. From the beginning they attempted to limit the ability of states to experiment, and whether Right (finding a “right to contract” in the US constitution, thus overturning local minimum wage laws) to Left (essentially, everything FDR and after) they have worked hard to end the USA as an economic and political union and hard to create something new.
One might be more sympathetic if their schemes had worked — but they didn’t. Centralist attempts to prevent states from helping the poor backfired, creating FDR and an even worse orientation. Centralist attempts to make states help blacks backfired, succeeding only in turning an underclass with strong families and high employment to an underclass with weak families and low employment. At home, these Nationalists displayed a disastrous ignorance of complex adaptive systems administration, believing in the power of Europeanist experts like them.
They are not men of our history — who were federal Continentalists, not Nationalists — nor men of our future — who may be the same. Instead, by adopting the “modern” European ideology of Nationalism as a replacement of our Constitutional values, they are misguided men of their times, like their contemporaries the Marxists.
Abroad, for the most part, they did believe in greatness. We can give them that. In Russia, their equivalents the Marxists did too. We can give them that.
And in Russia, too, Marxism is dead. Good.
mark:
April 7th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
hi Dan,
I see this piece is going to rake in a variety of vehement opinions.
The Eastern Establishment isn’t dying, it is dead. There are ppl descended from the Establishment and even aged former members in the new elite but the former have a different worldview and the latter long ago decided to collaborate in order to retain influence. The tipping point was 1974.
Federalist X:
April 7th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
dmmark: as usual, very good work. am i right that dan’s series on liberal education is relevant here? either way, keep it up. i wish i had more time to post a reply at my blog, but for now, an anecdote here will have to do.
the name jacob klein comes to mind… noted philosopher and mathetmatical historian as well as longtime dean of st. john’s college, is almost legendar at that school. i consider myself lucky to have been invited there on occassion, and i have learned a great deal from the community there on the need for a particular type of education in a republic.
one of my favorite stories is how during WWII the naval academy needed more room. the navy secretary’s office was considering commandeering the small, struggling liberal arts school across the street and using its hundred or so beds as an add-on campus.
jacob klein led a delegation to the secretary’s office. they were shown in, and the secretary wheeled round in his leather chair to face the group of professors and their dean.
he is alleged to have said something like: “here is a clock, you have two minutes to tell me why i shouldn’t take over your school to help us win this war.”
dr. klein reached in his breast pocket, took out a pouch of tobacco and his favorite pipe. slowly packed the pipe, stood up, and walked to the window. he lit the pipe, deliberately and slowly, and began to draw on the pipe, getting several good long deep puffs in before he motioned at the outside, as if ready to address the window…
as the clock reached one minute and fifty seconds, dr. klein finally broke the now maddening silence:
“because without st. john’s college, this country isn’t worth defending from the nazis.”
a good story, no? and more important, is what we’re wanting simply a true liberal education these days?
Federalist X:
April 8th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
mark: i think, though i’m not sure of course, that it would be an unfortunate mistake to lump dr. klein and his program at st. john’s into the “eastern establishment”. from what i can tell, the liberal arts project at st. john’s college is rather rebellious and trend bucking. all the students learn greek and french. they perform euclidean geometry from memorization, and engage in the study of ptolemny, copernicus and kepler. no electives. no technical training. professors are not referred to by title, but simply by mr. or ms. and perhaps most subversive of all, they require all students study music, as well as the other traditional liberal arts.
further, if you read some of klein’s work, notably his commentary on the meno, you’ll note a particular strain of classical greek radicalism… seldomn seen these days.