2 thoughts on “Ruling class analysis, surprisingly, at the American Spectator magazine”
A remarkable piece It’s quite a good article. I’m told Limbaugh read portions of it on the air? Interesting times.
He touches on one aspect of a very basic problem, the mixture of liberalism and traditionalism in the old American order. He’s aware that the nature of that order makes it hard to have much of a principle of elite guidance, and without such a principle it’s hard to organize a defense when a way of life comes under attack.
One point he doesn’t go into is that the liberal aspects of the old American order—the primacy of liberty and equality—necessarily eat away at the traditionalist aspects and eventually at the possibility of self-government itself. After all, if freedom and equality come first, and there are oppressive social customs (which there always are), why shouldn’t a political order that puts those things first do something about it?
He does mention God as a sort of super-principle, but seems to accept that some people are into God and some aren’t, and mentions no way in which the idea of divine order can acquire any content that could limit the logic of liberalism.
For all that, the piece and the response to it is a huge step forward in popular conservatism.
It seems to me that while It seems to me that while liberals would object to the existence of a ruling class, this article is pointing out that our ruling class has drifted away from any kind of normal experience of reality.
A remarkable piece
It’s quite a good article. I’m told Limbaugh read portions of it on the air? Interesting times.
He touches on one aspect of a very basic problem, the mixture of liberalism and traditionalism in the old American order. He’s aware that the nature of that order makes it hard to have much of a principle of elite guidance, and without such a principle it’s hard to organize a defense when a way of life comes under attack.
One point he doesn’t go into is that the liberal aspects of the old American order—the primacy of liberty and equality—necessarily eat away at the traditionalist aspects and eventually at the possibility of self-government itself. After all, if freedom and equality come first, and there are oppressive social customs (which there always are), why shouldn’t a political order that puts those things first do something about it?
He does mention God as a sort of super-principle, but seems to accept that some people are into God and some aren’t, and mentions no way in which the idea of divine order can acquire any content that could limit the logic of liberalism.
For all that, the piece and the response to it is a huge step forward in popular conservatism.
It seems to me that while
It seems to me that while liberals would object to the existence of a ruling class, this article is pointing out that our ruling class has drifted away from any kind of normal experience of reality.