Phi Beta Iota: This is the section that got our attention:
The information revolution, he said, has not raised the level of public intelligence. It is no secret, he continued, “that the public knows less about public affairs than it used to know. Millions of Americans cannot begin to tell you what is in the Bill of Rights, what Congress does, what the Constitution says about the powers of the presidency, how the party system emerged or how it operates. A sizeable majority, according to a recent survey, believe that Israel is an Arab nation.”
Our Revolting Elites
by J. R. Nyquist
Weekly Column Published: 1.15.2010
In 1995 Christopher Lasch came out with The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. The introduction was titled “The Democratic Malaise” and included chapters like “Does Democracy Deserve to Survive?” and “The Lost Art of Argument.” The threat to our civilization, said Lasch, does not come from the masses. The threat comes from the elite.
. . . . . . .
According to Lasch, there are far worse problems facing America than racism: “the crisis of competence; the spread of apathy and a suffocating cynicism; the moral paralysis of those who value ‘openness' above all.” . . .
The crisis of competence is, perhaps, the most troubling problem of all. It comes in three forms: (1) as a general incompetence for living; (2) as an incompetence that wants to manage society, and determine economic outcomes through a redistribution of wealth; (3) as an incompetence through the lowering of professional standards. The first is less dangerous to society than the second, and the third compounds the second. In terms of a general incompetence for living (1): It may be said that people are no longer literate; that their attention span has been attenuated by television and is unsuited to the study of difficult subjects; that their health is ruined through fast food, soft drinks, and excessive indulgence in sweets; that the sexes are disoriented and no longer know how to live together or behave; that children suffer from poor discipline. What is shocking to discover, however, is that all of these things have been encouraged by the purveyors of (2): the would-be managers of society who rail against the market, against fatherhood, against punishment and discipline, and against the necessities of war.
. . . . . . .
Today's elite does not possess intellectual excellence. Arguably, they do not know what excellence is, because their whole education has come out of third-rate minds — or worse. Our brightest people are taught remarkably stupid ideas in universities. What they have lost is a sense of history, which is the most important sense for those tasked with guiding society.
. . . . . . . .
The entire elite was incompetent, and Bush made this discovery, and was forced into a position of sorting out a mess caused by his underlings (and by himself). In the financial crisis we see the same forces at work. Every attempt to find a cure is worse than the disease. We move, therefore, from crisis to crisis, from catastrophe to catastrophe. If we had only educated our elite differently. If we had only given them history instead of what Lasch called “infantile sociology.”
Phi Beta Iota: Worth a full read. In 1997 we wrote of the cataclysmic gap between people with power and people with knowledge. Today the people with knowledge are trapped between a “floor” of ignorant masses that is pressing upwards (but without funds for nor interest in acquiring knowledge) and a “ceiling” that is falling lower and lower as more wealth is concentrated in the hands of the top 1%. In 2008 we wrote ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig to make the point that it is the system that is broken and We the People have lost sight of how to connect means, ways, and ends. We continue to believe that the only non-violent means of restoring the Republic is to launch an Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) “lifeboat” that both informs the political, policy, acquisition, and operations leaders, and can simultaneously inform, legally and ethically, the taxpayers paying for the OSINT.
See also:
Review: Fog Facts –Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books) (Hardcover)
Review: Breach of Trust–How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders (Hardcover)
Review: The End of America–Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
Review: Weapons of Mass Instruction
Review: Gag Rule–On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy
Review: Just How Stupid Are We?–Facing the Truth About the American Voter
Review: Deer Hunting with Jesus–Dispatches from America’s Class War
Review: Blue Collar Ministry–Facing Economic and Social Realities of Working People
Review: The Cheating Culture–Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead
Review: Life at the Bottom–The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
Review: An Atlas of Poverty in America–One Nation, Pulling Apart, 1960-2003
Review: The Working Poor–Invisible in America
Review: Nobodies–Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy
Review: Off the Books–The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
Review: Our Endangered Values–America’s Moral Crisis (Hardcover)
Review: War on the Middle Class–How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back
Review: Kids Who Kill–Confronting Our Culture of Violence
Review: The Disposable American–Layoffs and Their Consequences (Hardcover)
Review: The Shock Doctrine–The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Review: Tempting Faith–An Inside Story of Political Seduction
Review: The Marketing of Evil–How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom (Hardcover)
Review: Acts of God–The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America
Review: Dunces of Doomsday–10 Blunders That Gave Rise to Radical Islam, Terrorist Regimes, And the Threat of an American Hiroshima
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