…this really isn’t all that different from Obama’s pronouncement that those moving toward principled conservatism are merely frightened proles acting out against their betters in a pique of knee-jerk adolescent rebellion.
And if the establishment GOP thinks of it potential constituency this way, is it really any wonder its leaders believe it their right to select the “appropriate” candidates for all bleating sheep to flock behind?
Meet the old boss. Same as the new boss.
(h/t newrouter)
I think we saw a reflection of that lack of sophistication in the widespread shrieky fainting spells we saw among Team R peoples – many of whom were Tea Party sympathizers – after Mr. Daniels mused aloud about the relationship a hypothetical VAT might could have with economic growth.
Imagine that: a guy who shops and Whole Foods, eats designer cupcakes, and follows the latest pop fads as a marker of his identity, thinks the rabble isn’t sophisticated enough to understand who it is they are voting for and why.
No wonder he’s all out of sorts. The wrong tyrants are in power.
…widespread shrieky fainting spells…
This is pretty rich, coming from a guy who has to reach for the smelling salts any time one of his trigger words comes up in a comment thread.
And we see that in the democratic constituency, too, happyfeet. And in the libertarian party, etc…If you’re looking for purity and perfection, you’ve come to the wrong fucking planet. You, in regards to “message” are the anti-Jeff. Perception is not reality. No matter how hard you wish it to be.
I would loooooove a VAT. Think of the uptick in entrepreneurship! The day they enact a VAT, I enroll in trucking school. I’ll be driving the BIG RIGS!… and man will I be unlucky.
I missed the Daniels thing. Unless “bad” was the effect he saw of the VAT, then fainting spells would be called for.
Rove is simply singing for his supper. Once the paychecks start bearing a different header he’ll change his tune.
I understand Rush was tearing it up today though.
Here’s a transcript of the totality of Daniels’ remarks on his interest in Hermann Kahn’s ideas that got picked up and distorted by the press. This excerpt of one minute 37 seconds, from the context of a speech of 26 minutes given in gratitude for an award bearing Kahn’s name to Daniels. So the speech, we see, is actually mostly about Kahn and Kahn’s preferred ways of thinking and doing. It is certainly not about actual tax proposals being made as such.
Sdferr is clearly a meth-addled Nazi.
Towards Rove, I wonder what percentage of the establishment types have read Hayek?
Besides, it’s perfectly possible to come to a very similar conclusion by observing and thinking about the world for yourself just as Hayek came to his conclusions by doing the same.
Happens all the time. We need a word for convergent morphology that relates to ideas rather than body forms.
I’m sorry but the Hayek statement is really weird … Doesn’t Rove read the New York Times who recently raised the alarm of how unsophisticated Tea Partiers were reading once-obscure texts by dead writers?
Karl, go out and mingle more. Just ’cause a lot of Tea Partiers shop Target instead of Neiman-Marcus, and drink beer instead of Armadale doesn’t make them “unsophisticated”.
I was there at the Reagan Revolution too. Sorry you left it.
I saw the rap video of Keynes and Hayek, do I have to read the book?
Here‘s a bit of Hayek that I think goes too often ignored.
Karl. Two requests. Shut up. Go away.
Thanksyouverymuch.
Reading a book because Glenn Beck suggested it doesn’t really suggest sophistication. Nor does watching him at all for that matter. But it’s pretty appalling that someone like Rove would throw that out there since his signature achievement was getting a guy elected who doesn’t give one a sense that he’d read Hayek either.
Thank you, sdferr. Sadly, even the whole context has not kept the nozzles of douche from advancing their narrative. Fuckers.
DDS, Daniels Derangement Syndrome.
no but its funny in a gwen awful way that karl the rover(faux news) didn’t know that hayek was at the top of amazon 6 months ago because of beck(faux news)
Here‘s another bit of Hayek in .pdf format, “The Use of Knowledge in Society”.
Well you know stupid and scared is not a good way to live, right? Oh, never mind.
per 20 #2
Listen to Mark interview Professor Teresa Ghilarducci from October 2008
anybody want to see what else Gov Daniels had to say after the above transcript? it’s long, just so’s ya know.
I wanna see
only if mitch sings it in the key of c#
That was a great interview, newrouter. I almost felt bad for the woman.
Sdferr, your first excerpt seemed to show Daniels looking at the tax code as a tool to be designed with control of behavior in mind, rather than a necessary evil that needs to be sparingly wielded in support of minimal government.
Can you, or another excerpt address this perception of mine?
Lee, I think what I see is Daniels quoting Kahn who in turn is thinking about the necessary effects which any tax scheme will have on the behavior of a taxed entity, whether the entity be a person or a corporation. I doubt that Kahn believes that there is any behaviorally neutral tax scheme possible, in other words, so one may as well design whatever scheme is to be adopted to be as beneficial to the whole as it is possible to do, even in the face of the acceptance that any such scheme will also be necessarily a negative weight on an ideal productive capacity (the Madisonian “if men were angels, no government would be necessary” sort of negative, that is). So not so much a tool for its own sake, as a resort to better planning in the event, I take it.
I don’t follow pop fads as a marker of my identity I follow them cause that’s a big chunk of what we do here and what the people I work with are thinking about a lot and cupcakes are tasty and probably more pertinently two of the more creative cupcakeries are in my zone where I live and I don’t really go to Whole Foods a lot cause they are very squinchy here in the valley you don’t have aisles and aisles of tastyness like in Texas… I did see a big one in Irvine the other day but that one definitely isn’t in my zone cause Irvine is many many leagues distant. I’m more of a Trader Joe’s guy or at least I try to be cause of they are non-union.
Rove is striving for relevancy and can’t find it, as the plebes now refuse to tow the line and bow to their “betters”. Rush gave him a shot (let him guest host a show), but that was mostly for the publicity. He’s a (horribly boring) Fox contributor. Unlike James Carville and Dick Morris, he has yet to find his niche in the administrative afterlife.
Perhaps Dick Cheney could take him quail hunting.
Tour a Chilean mine or something.
Also wouldn’t hurt if he let the Sun touch him some. Tan that egg/head/thing of his.
maybe we find how much gov’t we need 1st and then decide on what to tax. sing it mitch in c#
fat boy rush says karl the rover and carville are good at what they do in “normal” times: shifting indies left or right a few %. but not now when dealing with “fundamental transformation”.
I think it’s important also to note how unimaginable it is to imagine Mr. Daniels’ thoughtful and erudite speech coming out of Sarah Palin’s mouf.
Karl can blow me… Like many people really understood the economics of what Stockman and Reagan were proposing, it was Voodoo Economics, but we wanted a return to greatness, and Reagan simply explained taxes weren’t a part of greatness… Today, the Tea Partiers understand exactly what is happening economically, it just scares Karl because there won’t be any need for eggheads to ‘splain it to the masses…
please in c#
Is newrouter trying to be an ass?
Rove should shut the frikken hell up. Elitest a-hole.
@27-thanks sdferr.
Sdferr was nice enough to email the video link to the Daniels speech.
Starting at about 31:13, there is a section quite relevant to this thread.
Geez. One day you’re Satan incarnate, behind the curtain pulling every lever controlling the world’s biggest and most vile warmongering superpower, and the next you’re leftover fishsticks. What a country.
leftover fishsticks have a super high glycemic index
you could go blind
Why?
Because he suggested it?
What if he suggested “War and Peace”? Or Dante’s “Inferno”? Or “Paradise Lost”?
Or The Coming Insurrection?
Sophistication is overpriced cupcakes and horrific contemporary pop music. So long as you wear an ironic t-shirt while engaging with either.
I don’t even own an ironic t-shirt unless maybe it’s ironic in japanese but ok yeah I love the horrific pop music here’s my new band for this week
People who own ironic t-shirts that they don’t even know they’re ironic, are ironic.
Reading a book because Glenn Beck suggested it doesn’t really suggest sophistication.
Abe, I really don’t understand your sentence. We are to accept or reject books because of who is recommending them? So we don’t appear “unsophisticated”?
Um … I find that a troubling attitude.
Abe, I really don’t understand your sentence. We are to accept or reject books because of who is recommending them? So we don’t appear “unsophisticated”?
Uh, no. What it means in a nutshell, is that it’s a friggin’ canonical book and running out to buy it on Beck’s Oprahesque say so doesn’t exactly suggest one is a serious conservative thinker.
friggin’ canonical book and running out to buy it on Beck’s Oprahesque say so doesn’t exactly suggest one is a serious conservative thinker.
You do understand that with the advent of public edumacation eschewing original sources and also giving non-leftists writers, especially dead white ones, no exposure at all, even people who declare themselves as supporters of small government are starving to learn more BUT many don’t know where to look first.
Canonical is kind of the NYTimes way of damning with faint praise?
You know, I have never cared about the origin of one’s principles, only the content of those principles, so I don’t give a ripping fart whether it was Beck OR Oprah that said “hey here’s an interesting book, Road to Serfdom.” That it gets READ is fuckin’ more important.
Maybe then all those hoi polloi, unsophisticated, unserious conservatives who merely exhibit conservative behavior can graduate to “serious thinker”.
Why do I get the feeling you’re referring to yourself, Darleen? I don’t know why else you’d choose to be so defensive about a rather benign statement of fact.
There is a renewed interest in Hayek. I read it a year and half ago. NOT because of Beck. These ideas are percolating out there, and people (like Beck) pick it up. Beck is riding the wave, not creating it. What motivates HIM has motivated others independent of what he says on his show.
duh.
People in Washington seem to think “we” don’t do anything w/o smart folk (like him) motivating us.
Reading a book because Glenn Beck suggested it doesn’t really suggest sophistication.
Well, as I said I didn’t read it because of Beck, but I don’t want to be sophisticated. I live out in the country now. I’m trying to be redneck.
I just wanted to see that in print one more time.
I’ve never read Hayek, which is mostly why I don’t participate in discussions of how this or that pertains to Hayek’s writings. Ditto Strauss.
In general, I have a big gaping hole in my education, where things of that nature are concerned. I’ve read a teensy bit of Rousseau, but that’s about it.
So, in your world, how do people learn which books they should read?
Well, speaking as someone who read Hayek before Beck was a national name, but likely based on the unsophisticated recommendation of (whisper it) Limbaugh, I’m curious:
What about the source of inspiration to read a book automatically disqualifies someone as a serious thinker?
What about the source of inspiration to read a book automatically disqualifies someone as a serious thinker?
Did I say that it automatically disqualifies someone as a serious thinker somewhere?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
My best professor in college, when I was getting my degree in Useless Knowledge, said he didn’t care why we read the important works of political thought as long as we read them. If we weren’t serious thinkers before we read them, we might at least have a shot at being so afterward.
I’m pretty sure he disapproves of Glenn Beck — but of the people who read Hayek or anyone else because of Beck, not so much.
The “sophistication” tag rankles because we have a legion of annointed sophisticates that are completely clueless and are fucking up the country with their sophisticated ideas.
I’m pretty sure he disapproves of Glenn Beck — but of the people who read Hayek or anyone else because of Beck, not so much.
I never meant to suggest otherwise. It’s great that people bought it. What I was reacting to was, however assinine Rove’s comment may have been, the counterpoint that countless people read The Road To Serfdom on Beck’s say so doesn’t negate his point which was larger than any one book. The elitism in his statement was nauseating, but the anti-intellectualism creeping into the right in the form of a reflexive anti-elitism isn’t any better. It would be nice to imagine that all these newly minted Hayek readers led to a boom in sales of, say, Reflections On The Revolution In France or Capitalism And Freedom, but such doesn’t appear to be the case.
You know who got me into Hayek? That Jeff Goldstein fellow. Or rather his blog. Hayek led me to Von Mises, who in turn led me to Carl Menger. Thank you, Jeff Goldstein.
And really, beyond knowing not to fart out loud or say the word “fuck” at the table during a sophisticated dinner party, what has this sophistication gotten us? The thinking that if we are like France, America will be better? Because thats what passes for “sophisticated” thought these days.
These are intensely good questions about how we come to read certain books (and not others, since time our time is limited), taking those questions in their larger ambit, I think. Along with these questions, the questions we have about how some books gain repute among men, which they then may carry along with their names for very long periods or short, some shedding their reputations after a time if they happen to have been misjudged, while others do not, though this latter occurs much more rarely.
The questions about the books however, seem to me to be separable from the questions we might raise about people recommending books, such as, on the one hand a Glenn Beck, an Oprah or a college prof., and on the other hand, a newly met neighbor (even cyber-neighbor), a fellow congregant at church, or a new acquaintance in a bar.
I don’t get what the argument with Abe is all about. Reading a book just because a celebrity endorses it doesn’t necessarily mark one as sophisticated. Doesn’t matter the title of the book or the name of the celebrity — reading the first ten pages of something because someone on TV or radio says “It’s really good!” isn’t proof of serious thinking. I’m not sure why this is so controversial.
That being said, once a person reads and understands an important text, and uses that understanding to find other important texts and to draw connections to current events and argue for the likely effects of behaviors and policies relating to what learned in the text — that’s a mark of sophistication. Again, it doesn’t matter what the stimulus was for picking up the first book in the first place — the main thing is that the mental heavy lifting was done.
It seems like Abe is arguing about the stimulus, and Darleen, et al are arguing about the labor and the outcome. From where I sit, both parties are correct, though they seem to be talking past one another.
The elitism in his statement was nauseating, but the anti-intellectualism creeping into the right in the form of a reflexive anti-elitism isn’t any better. It would be nice to imagine that all these newly minted Hayek readers led to a boom in sales of, say, Reflections On The Revolution In France or Capitalism And Freedom, but such doesn’t appear to be the case.
This is one of those generalized arguments that sounds good, but what doe sit mean?
The anti-elitism that “I” see is a rejection of the notion that just because someone is in a position in DC, doesn’t mean he knows shit. That just because someone went to “Har-vard” doesn’t mean they have a lick of sense. Mixed in with a healthy disdain of what folks have “learned” at those elite universities.
Finally, it is mostly a rejection of the “elite political class” that has basically become unmoored from the principals of our country.
n Beck, an Oprah or a college prof., and on the other hand, a newly met neighbor
Oh, now you’ve got me. I do have a snobbish opinion of those who read books because Oprah recommended ’em.
It’s not “anti-elitism” to oppose stupid ideas that are proposed by elites.
Carin, isn’t the problem of elitism you’re describing one of false elitism or pseudo-elitism, rather than one of elitism as such? Seems so to me anyhow. There may be though, another problem, a distinguishable problem, such as Abe sees perhaps, with some segment of the party or people rejecting genuine elitism where they see it, whether in confusion over pseudo-elitism or otherwise? I’m not at all sure about this.
I’ve noticed that Insty has taken to striking out “elite” and writing in “credentialed” when discussing our betters in Washington and the Academy. I heartily endorse this development.
This is one of those generalized arguments that sounds good, but what doe sit mean?
It means that there’s truth in what Rove said and justification for being peeved that he said it. I’ll leave it to someone smarter than I to thread the needle on that.
There was some interesting “elitism” business in Blackhawk Down as I recall, between the opinions the Airborne peoples had of themselves overagainst regular Army sorts and the opinions the author Bowden had of the Airborne guys overagainst the Delta Force people. And then how the various individuals carried their respective “knowledge”.
The truth is that (perhaps) a lot of people bough Hayek’s book … and either didn’t read or didn’t understand it. But plenty did. That’s why Rove’s comment deserves a hearty fuck you.
And, it doesn’t take a genius to be peeved about the direction our country has taken. Another Fuck you aimed at Rove.
Sdferr – yes, probably. That’s what what squid mentions about Insty is good.
I suppose that another way to look at is that in the public sphere it’s far more important for conservatives to be able to understand and articulate what it is they wish to conserve than it is for a bunch of emotive leftist douchebags to remember a damn thing from the day before yesterday.
#66 sdferr: it’s a word definition thing.
An “elitist” is a person who assumes that he or she is more capable than the general ruck of humanity whether or not such an assumption is justified.
Now: it is an observed fact, throughout the ages, that people who are in fact highly able tend strongly to be at least somewhat humble about it. People who are genuinely elite have no reason to brag about it or assert it, because their actions are sufficient to establish their status.
It follows that “false elitism” and “pseudo-elitism” are oxymoronic. A person who loudly claims elite status can be assumed, a priori, to be an individual of ordinary or less ability whose claim is based on something other than performance or a capability to perform.
Regards,
Ric
The claim that so and so is an elite can be made as much by an onlooker in the absence of any such claim by the subject as the subject of the claim. So there is no need to invoke an oxymoronic confusion.
[…] follows that “false elitism” and “pseudo-elitism” are oxymoronic. It’s a word definition thing. Tip Jar Donations (via PayPal)Hit it, folks. :fx:Calvin eyes:Puuleeeez?You don't know […]
My own two cents?
Abe is correct that there is a whiff of misplaced anti-intellectualism in the widespread revolt against entrenched DC interests and the often stilted pronouncements of those considered to be erudite academicians. And there probably are aome number of folks who read Hayek on Beck’s instruction, and either read the words without understanding, never finished, or merely put on the coffetable to bolster their Beckian/Tea party cred amongst their peers. Still, the referrer doesn’t pollute the message of the text that is referred. Which brings me back to the anti-intellectualism; and my thinking that it is a broad-brush response by folks that, by lack of exposure, be it by study or previous attention paid to issues of governance, truly don’t understand what some see as the wonkish details of serious discussions. In some cases they are probably basing their reactions, and professed opinions, on who is making the statement or the reaction of a member of the punditry that they have come to trust placing the seal of approval on a speaker or idea.
A large number of tea-partiers, being what Nixon referred to as the silent majority, may have neither been active in, nor paid attention to, matters political for a generation. And some of thise folks, while perhaps instinctively knowing the country is headed in a decidedly wrong direction, look to folks like Limbaugh or Beck to help them filter some of the information that they are unfamiliar and/or uncomfortable with.
Which is what seems to me what Rove was correctly, but grossly inartfully, observing. Who knows? maybe he’s a bit butt-hurt because he’s no longer one of the trusted pundits who the neophytes trust as an information filter.
Which brings me full circle, to the obsevations I’ve been long-windedly moving toward. sdferr is right-on-the-money in #66. Elitism isn’t the problem, self-styled faux-elitism is; as well as the combined admonsihment of other faux-elitists that we plebes should all just SHUT-UP! and do as they say, becuase they know far better than we. No, that’s the phony elitism of a stilted system where merit has not determined elite status, but that it has been conferred instead by a star chamber of other faux-elites; such as the MFM always talling us how BRILLIANT! and JUDICIOUS! Obama is.
Elite status born of merit rests on accomplishment, and the strength of ideas; a self confident elitism that neither condescends nor belittles those of lesser ability, experience, or education. It’s the elitism of the Aristoi, that the founders of our nation counted on when devising our divided system of government; a disinterested elitism, in the classical sense.
It is an elitism that has been subjugated in our society where everyone is winner, or get’s trophies for participating; where in the halls of government a correct racial and ethnic mix is valued over ability and experience. It is an elitism that has been wilfully destroyed in order to degrade America; but that last seemingly tin-foil hat wearing sentance is the subject of another discussion…
W/R
I don’t follow that reasoning, Ric. For one, if it’s definitional, I don’t know that elitist = “a person who assumes that he or she is more capable than the general ruck of humanity whether or not such an assumption is justified.”
Now, you might believe that saying something proves it’s not true but people say things with their actions all the time. Michael Jordan took the last shot rather than passing and Oppenheimer didn’t play coy and protest that he wasn’t up to the job.
goin’ fishing, laters gators.
“Gone fishin’, instead of just a-wishin’”
-Der Bingle and Satchmo.
Good luck with the line.
To me, the current government elites claiming to know how to run the country is like someone who doesn’t know how internal combustion works claiming he can fix your car engine.
“No, no, you put the water in with the gas to increase combustion pressure to get more power. It doesn’t belong in the radiator. You want the oil in the radiator to keep down rust in the engine block. That way the engine will last longer.”
Thats what I hear everytime Obama and Democrats in general talk about their economic solutions. Or health care. Or anything they claim expertise in.
I think one reason the notion of an elite rankles is because we use it as a global attribute rather than a specific or series of specifics.
When we think of the specifics — hey, this guy is a fantastic electrician and that gal is an awesome financial planner — we see it for what it is: the unavoidable outcome of the fact that people are nowhere near equal in aptitude, developed skill and work ethic.
Ooops,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqdtzJvliMk
Forgot the link…
True, it comes down to the difference between “elite” and elitism, — but I’m not so sure that being anti-elite is necessarily such a bad thing either. It depends on how the elite got that way.
In Old Europe, elites got that way by having the right ancestors, and we have more than anybody needs of that here in America too. If someone is anti-that kind of elite, I’ll be happy to agree with him.
If they don’t know how the internal combustion engine works, they’re not elite mechanics. They’re frauds.
Is KKKarl rove a card-carrying member of “the ruling class”; an elitist equally as odious and condescending as nationally recognized Democrats? Not when we consider Obama for a moment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/18/AR2010101803778.html
Rove may be inartfully pointing out that some tea-partiers are basing their first-time involvement in politics on intuitive, rather than studiously considered, opposition to the specifics of Obama’s policied; but he’s certainly not attributing them to an almost reptilian response mechanism.
But perhaps I didn’t read his quote correctly.
Oh, I totally missed this:
I second that endorsement.
[…] we establishment types will take if from here, thank you — and if you wouldn’t mind, now that we’ve got […]
I don’t remember where I ran across the notion, but the writer summed it up pretty succinctly: the problem is that there are a hell of a lot of elitists, but damn few of the elite.
I can respect somebody for being elite in their field, though my respect comes from seeing their actual accomplishments. Elitism is a sort of vanity that I find tolerable in the actual elite, but insufferable in those who haven’t earned it.
Too many people believe themselves to belong to the elite just because they attended a certain school, or mingle with a certain crowd. They mistake the markers of elitism for the accomplishments of the elite. Hence, the distinction between the truly elite and the merely credentialed.
Not if they have a messaging wing professing that they are indeed the credentialed class, and that such suggests a rise on merit — when in fact it does not necessarily mean any such thing.
In that case they are both elites, in terms of how they are presented, and frauds, in terms of what they know.
Clearly, I don’t have a knee-jerk revulsion to all academics, eg. But I know enough of them, and enough about academia, to know that it makes ABSOLUTE SENSE to question everything an academic ever concludes. That’s not anti-intellectualism. In fact, that’s intellectualism.
Anti-intellectualism is assuming that the position held by the academic is correct based solely on the fact that the person holding the opposing view is not an academic.
“Anti-intellectualism is assuming that the position held by the academic is correct based solely on the fact that the person holding the opposing view is not an academic.”
Succinctly characterized and very well put JeffG.
Credentials are part of what make the so-called elite “elite.” But it’s primarily attitude, an allegiance to a class identity. Both political parties are infected by elitism. The difference is that the Republican elites think anyone who isn’t a member of the cadre is too stupid to handle the serious business of running the nation, whereas the Democrat elites believe non-members are too stupid to run their own lives, let alone the nation.
I totally agree with your comment but I’d posit the opposite as well.
So: Anti-intellectualism is also assuming that the position held by the academic is false based solely on the fact that the person holding the opposing view is not an academic.
The true mistake comes from assuming that true or false can be determined by looking at a secondary marker completely unrelated to truth.
I agree totally bh. They are frauds.
By the way, I’m not referring to skepticism above. Skepticism is a universal virtue in my book.
you could go blind
Splaeff.
It is skepticism based on past results of the application of the Marxoid ideas of academics and other credentialed persons that leads to the distrusting. Which is healthy and not anti-intellectual IMO.
I fully agree with that, SGT Ted.
For me, it’s a baby in the bathwater thing. The one side should readily acknowledge there is a heck of a lot of bathwater in the tub and the other side should readily acknowledge that babies still aren’t bathwater.
For instance, Hayek — the peg of Rove’s snobbery — was himself an academic.
Credentials are part of what make the so-called elite “elite.” But it’s primarily attitude, an allegiance to a class identity. Both political parties are infected by elitism. The difference is that the Republican elites think anyone who isn’t a member of the cadre is too stupid to handle the serious business of running the nation, whereas the Democrat elites believe non-members are too stupid to run their own lives, let alone the nation.
I don’t entirely agree with that. The left, it’s quite clear to me, is utterly incapable of making critical judgments within their own ranks. You’re right about the regard in which they hold the abstract masses, but reading from the same script is the great equalizer. There’s no one on the left too stupid to merit a soapbox.
The right, by contrast, enables the double standard. Maybe it’s temperament which precludes the righty elites from calling, say, Joe Biden or Maxine Waters the morons they so demonstrably are, but they also internalize the left’s narratives and are easily embarrassed by others on their own side. It isn’t arrogance so much as weakness and insecurity I think.
Late to the thread, but to clarify:
Someone who is superior in accomplishment and intellect is elite.
Someone who claims elite status is an elitist.
People who are genuinely superior in accomplishment and intellect — truly elite — rarely brag about it.
It follows that, as a close first approximation, an elitist is a liar. The characterization is therefore derogatory without requiring adjectives, hyphenated or otherwise.
Regards,
Ric
“I can respect somebody for being elite in their field, though my respect comes from seeing their actual accomplishments. ”
I define “elite” more down this path. It’s the cream of the crop, of whatever category you are describing, be it politician or
cookchef. As such, I’m not anti-elite.Problem is, the “elitist” has successfully made the word elite mean ivy-league educated, power connected, wealthy, influential people that think themselves superior to those not defined as such. In my humble opinion, an elite scholar intimately familiar with all the “serious thinker” type books is not necessarily more financially sophisticated than a city college educated guy from blue collar roots that conceived of and successfully runs a local chain of businesses.
Assuming the scholar is more intelligent because he had the luxury of a more expensive education, and is a superior human being because he has more influence, has been too widely accepted as gospel, and is now incurring backlash. A freak’in housewife that balances the family checkbook see’s she has more financial sophistication than the so called elites running the country. And yet these same elites want to control ever growing aspects of our life, up to and including regulating how private individuals conduct themselves so they don’t impact the weather.
Algore(and his ilk) has done to “elite” what he did to “science”, laid waste to it’s foundational premise.
It’s why Palin is so admired, and why all happyfeets rants will do nought but reinforce the backlash.
Sarah Palin is Obama’s hot ticket to a second term cause of she so stupid
Sarah Palin deserves credit for her role in what is about to happen in November.
Your role, happyfeet, has been that of a woman insisting on being a member of a mens poker club, then bitching that the club wants to talk about men stuff while playing poker.
Why don’t you go start your own cupcake party, no christers allowed…?
and my time is a piece of wax falling on a termite what’s choking on the splinters
Sarah Palin is Obama’s hot ticket to a second term cause of she so stupid
Yet, in a universe occupied by Barbara Boxer, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Dennis Kuccinnich, Maxine Waters, Al Franken, Debbie Stabenow, and scores of others, she’s not exactly overmatched like you are around here. If she should just shut up, you should tie a rope around your neck and beat off until you suffocate.
I should die?
In the sense that if you ever shut the fuck up you wouldn’t exist to us, yes. I wouldn’t actually hope for your demise to be literal, thus putting cupcake shops out of business and doing serious damage to the youtube page view counts of videos with scantily clad, barely post-pubescent girls.
“and my time is a piece of wax falling on a termite what’s choking on the splinters”
Your time is the incessant buzzing of a fly caught between the screen and the window.
ok thank you y’all are sweet here is a video for you and also for Mr. JD what doesn’t have the scantily clad girls
I prefer the scantily clad women to MIDGETS !!!!! That was evil.
That link was you at your bestest. You really should consider being the official blog mascot/esoterica miner and regale people with tales of Californication what don’t involve politickings. Sort of like your own version of the kiddie table at family gatherings when the grown ups are just soused enough to think you little brats are adorable.
That may be more than a little bit harsh, Abe. But I am not one to talk, so, never mind.
Making sense would be a refreshing change of pace from the splinter-choking.
I’m friends with a guy on a college football board who everyone else wants to gut like a fish. Those of us who’ve met him are far more sympathetic, though it’s easy to see why no one else can stand him. So I can certainly understand why you’re easier on hf. But I don’t suffer fools well, which is a problem if the particular fool can’t be avoided.
hey what college football board I’ll check it out