In "Why Our Elites Stink," David Brooks writes in the NYT:
The corruption that has now crept into the world of finance and the other professions is not endemic to meritocracy but to the specific culture of our meritocracy. The problem is that today’s meritocratic elites cannot admit to themselves that they are elites.
Everybody thinks they are countercultural rebels, insurgents against the true establishment, which is always somewhere else. This attitude prevails in the Ivy League, in the corporate boardrooms and even at television studios where hosts from Harvard, Stanford and Brown rail against the establishment.
As a result, today’s elite lacks the self-conscious leadership ethos that the racist, sexist and anti-Semitic old boys’ network did possess. If you went to Groton a century ago, you knew you were privileged. You were taught how morally precarious privilege was and how much responsibility it entailed. You were housed in a spartan 6-foot-by-9-foot cubicle to prepare you for the rigors of leadership.
The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service.
Today’s elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership code. The language of meritocracy (how to succeed) has eclipsed the language of morality (how to be virtuous). Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character. Most of their problems can be traced to this.
If you read the e-mails from the Libor scandal you get the same sensation you get from reading the e-mails in so many recent scandals: these people are brats; they have no sense that they are guardians for an institution the world depends on; they have no consciousness of their larger social role.
This is not a new theme for Brooks, who wrote a similar column in 2010 ("The Power Elite.") Brooks tries to walk the fine line between being public-spirited and having a career. Now, you know and I know that what he's trying to do here, under the guise of talking about "meritocrats," is to get through to his fellow American Jews that they need to stop conceptualizing themselves so overwhelmingly as History's Greatest Victims and start developing a sense of noblesse oblige about this country in which they have become predominant, in which they dominate the worldview of the educated classes. In a response to Brooks' "Power Elite" column in VDARE.com two years ago, I wrote:
The theory behind the dusty old concept of noblesse oblige is that a powerful class that thinks of itself as being in the game for the very long run will tend to behave in a more responsible fashion than one that doesn't. As they say, nobody ever washed a rental car.
In the early 20th Century, for example, leadership caste WASPs played a major role in setting aside National Parks and in limiting immigration.
Even more fundamentally, they tolerated criticism of themselves by others. Criticism encourages you to behave better.
Of course, the moribund WASP Establishment's increasing fair-mindedness had its downsides. One problem with letting other people have their say about you is that they may undermine your power. [David] Samuels writes of "my own personal sorrow about the fate of the Harvard-educated Brahmins I admired in my youth, who cherished their belief in liberal openness while licking at the bleached bones of their family romances. Their mansions are threadbare and drafty, and stickers on their salt-eaten Volvos advertise the cause of zero population growth. It's hard to imagine that their ancestors sailed clipper ships to China and wrote great books and built great companies and ran spies behind enemy lines in Europe."
But, shouldn't new elites be held to the same standards of criticism that helped them displace the old elites? Why is it considered admirable for the new establishment to try to destroy the careers of their critics?
For noblesse oblige to work, privileged and influential groups have to be publicly acknowledged to be privileged and influential. If, on the other hand, their main sense of collective identity is that of marginal members of society endangered by the might of the current majority, then the system doesn't operate. ...
American Jews should start thinking of themselves less as oppressed outcasts who need to go for whatever they can get while the getting is good, and start more accurately thinking of themselves as belonging to the best-connected inner circle of the contemporary American Establishment.
Thus, American Jews should realize that, like the Protestant elite of yore, their privileged position as a de facto leadership caste bestows upon themselves corresponding duties to conserve the long-term well-being of the United States—rather than to indulge in personal and ethnic profit and power maximization.
But that's unlikely to happen until the Jewish elite to begin to tolerate non-Jewish criticism, rather than to continue to try to destroy the careers of critics—or even just honest observers—in what seems to be an instinctive reaction intended to encourage the others.
Deep down, does Brooks agree with what I said? I would assume: yes. We read each other and we are more or less on the same page.
In career terms, obviously, Brooks' euphemistic approach is better than my plain-spoken one. And it would be easy to argue that my frankness is too abrasive, that Brooks' vague euphemisms are better for getting our mutual message out.
But, here's the rub: What evidence is there that Brooks' readers grasp what he's talking about at all? I've read through a fair fraction of the 527 comments on his column, and I don't see many (if any) examples suggesting that Brooks' readers comprehend his underlying message.
What goes unsaid eventually goes unthought.
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124 comments:
Who do you think his readers/commenters are? I doubt many fall into any 'elite' category.
"The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations."
Or, to put it another way, they were true conservatives, not liberals and libertarians. They understood that society is built on a generational compact, with the current generation serving as a link between the past and the future.The conservative is always aware that he must cherish what has been bequeathed to him and pass it on unsullied to those who will come after him.
Syon
The theory behind the dusty old concept of noblesse oblige is that a powerful class that thinks of itself as being in the game for the very long run will tend to behave in a more responsible fashion than one that doesn't.
I don't think this is part of the Jewish cultural DNA. Their narrative about themselves is that they create value by changing institutions, not preserving them.
It seems to me that the new economic elite, especially the Jewish portion, does have a sense of moral obligation to the less fortunate rest of humanity, only it takes different forms. Instead of restraining their own competitive behavior, which would be costly in today’s much more competitive markets, conscience persuades them to fund private charities and support redistributive government policies. Instead of a felt loyalty to their fellow Americans on questions like immigration policy, they feel obligated to help foreigners and would-be Americans, who are, after all, generally less fortunate than Americans.
It’s a different kind of noblesse oblige, pointed in somewhat different directions, but it is there and strong.
Everything could describe Barack Obama. He is a rebel and social activist through and through.
He is anti everything, but now he is president, as elite as they get. His job number one is / should be to preserve America.
Too bad he doesn't like America or feel like it is his country.
in Columbus:"I don't think this is part of the Jewish cultural DNA. Their narrative about themselves is that they create value by changing institutions, not preserving them."
Considering the ongoing existence of Rabbinic Judaism itself (a project that has sustained itself for nearly 2,000 years) and the realization of the Zionist dream in the 20th century (the culmination of hopes that were maintained since at least the Bar Kokhba revolt), I think otherwise. The Jews seem quite capable preserving institutions.
Syon
Their narrative about themselves is that they create value by changing institutions, not preserving them.
By changing others, they preserve themselves in the diaspora.
I'm not sure Brooks even thinks about things in the exact terms you do--he may just see the new elite as more diverse (which includes more Jews) and less responsible.
We know he reads you. He even tried to give you credit, and then everyone jumped on him.
The American Experiment was severely disrupted by early 20th century immigration from portions of Europe that supported theocracy during the Protestant Reformation and Enlightenment. This resulted in the centralization of powers during the 20th century replacing the laboratory of the States with strong central governmental control, in direct contravention of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. This then resulted in the immigration liberalizations of the last half of the 20th century and the present condition in which massive amnesty programs for illegal immigrants are routinely proposed and passed as a means of importing not only labor but voters and activists from cultures that have no history of successfully resisting theocratic rule.
That this pro-theocratic liberalization came primarily from the founding culture of Western theocracy, Judaism, is an important, if heretical, topic under the current theocracy that dominates thought in the United States. It is always the case that the most threatening ideas to a theocracy are heresies -- and this is no exception.
Reality is hierarchical which means there will always be a ruling class. We can object to the content and character of the ruling class, but it will never go away.
But that causes a big problem for the establishment. According to liberal orthodoxy, ruling classes are a relic from our racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic past. We're so much smarter than our ancestors, so much freer, so much better than they were! To admit that there is a ruling class and they are it would destroy their own sense of self. It would imply they have, like Brooks said, a social role to play besides being the inquisitors for liberal orthodoxy.
So they're never going to admit it.
You probably could have been an honorary member of The Tribe if you were more careful in expressing your views. Sometimes I don't think you understand the survival of the fittest thing.
Personally, I admire the martyrs, but, even here, they are more often the object of ridicule than devotion.
I don't understand why he necessarily has to be talking about elite Jews here. Isn't he talking about all the elites, many of which are Jews but many of which are also WASPs? Are there really more Jews in the elite class than WASPs these days?
What would happen if Brooks said:
"My fellow Jews, we largely run America, there is no plausible near or mid-term threat to our contined dominance. We need to start working to preserve this great nation we are so fortunate to lead"?
I don't think things would go very well for him.
This was written in the NYT?
I am not a dolt, but I wouldn't catch on to what Brooks almost says.
Jews are not WASPs, they don't accept criticism or a even capable to handle it.
They have their tikkun olam vision of what America should be and the chutzpah to make it happen, and you better don't dare to disagree with them.
"They were insular and struggled with intimacy..."
Natural whiners and cry-babies always think that dignified men are "struggling with intimacy." Why is that? The short don't normally accuse the tall of harboring an insatiable desire to become midgets. I guess character matters more than height, so the self-deluding mechanisms are stronger.
"Today’s elite is more talented..."
I don't know about that. Good breeding over many generations can (and I think did) produce better results than a single generation of meritocratic sieving. Farmers have been applying this insight to agriculture for 10,000 years now.
Not everything is about ethnicity. Edmund Burke was complaining about the same sort of thing over 200 years ago:
The age of chivalry is gone. -- That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold a generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, achieved defensive nations, the nurse of the manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.
This was well before Jewish emancipation. Modernity is not an ethnic thing.
http://www.amren.com/news/2012/07/aclu-alleges-michigan-school-district-violated-students-right-to-learn-to-read/
hahaha, blue states failing blacks.
I don't think the old WASP elite volunatarily divested themselves so a new jewish elite could engage in ethnic nepotism. But, confronted with the hypocrisy, does anyone think the new jewish elite will divest themselves? or even admit they are wrong. THey can't even TAKE criticism from gentiles, let alone agree with it.
at the end of the day, they are horrible custodians - they have too much hostility towards the core culture, too much of a victim narrative. But they are not going to go quietly.
It seems to me that the new economic elite, especially the Jewish portion, does have a sense of moral obligation to the less fortunate rest of humanity, only it takes different forms
no, they don't they justify destroying the American white middle class by waxing noble about 'global equality.
The Jews do not share kinship with the bulk of the American population and therefore don't feel much responsibility for them. Kevin McDonald has written about this.
Hmmm I had no idea Brooks was Jewish. To be honest I never read him unless someone points out something he wrote in a thread or a blog post like this.
I just have to wonder though. The particular niche that Jewish people have in this country now has other competitors coming in that want that same niche.
There was recently a post about Hunter High School in New York City, and the incredible increase in the number of oriental students.
Whatever the exact IQ of Jews is in relation to others, from what I've ready Brahmins from India test just as well.
And the Chinese aren't far behind. With Tiger Moms and drive that just won't end.
Plus there is are the usual high IQ portions of the non-Jewish whites that are still running around.
It just seems to me that Asian immigration (and probably steady but small Indian immigration) will continue.
There aren't that many groups in America that want to be brainiacs, but as of now I think some people are on board that might want to take that one.
So how long is it going to last? Despite all the success of Jews in modern America, it seems to me most of it was done by means of attending a University and the paths that opens up, unless it was done in the film or music businesses.
Blue collar Jews are a distant memory now. What happens when other ethnic groups decide they actually want that academic niche?
I mean I could actually imagine gross numbers of Jewish kids at elite schools shrinking a lot if it is a totally merit based system, or at least the version we have now.
Thus, American Jews should realize that, like the Protestant elite of yore, their privileged position as a de facto leadership caste bestows upon themselves corresponding duties to conserve the long-term well-being of the United States
What's left to "conserve"? Somebody should have given the Jews this advice before the 1965 immigration act.
Shite, back in the day, even elite people were in the military!
You may be right, but I certainly didn't see Brooks talking about Jews. I see him talking about what he sees as snotty rich kids whose mommy and daddy bought them everything and have only their parents to thank for their superior achievement.
It seems to me that the new economic elite, especially the Jewish portion, does have a sense of moral obligation to the less fortunate rest of humanity, only it takes different forms. Instead of restraining their own competitive behavior, which would be costly in today’s much more competitive markets, conscience persuades them to fund private charities and support redistributive government policies. Instead of a felt loyalty to their fellow Americans on questions like immigration policy, they feel obligated to help foreigners and would-be Americans, who are, after all, generally less fortunate than Americans.
It’s a different kind of noblesse oblige, pointed in somewhat different directions, but it is there and strong.
------------------------------
Well-said, the Jew Elite is about doing what's fair and right for all of mankind, not just privileged Americans.
Elites said to stink but not named as Stinkowicz.
"Now, you know and I know that what he's trying to do here, under the guise of talking about 'meritocrats,' is to get through to his fellow American Jews that they need to stop conceptualizing themselves so overwhelmingly as History's Greatest Victims..."
True to some extent, but he's also making a generational point about boomers. The boomer generation grew up as the RADICAL GENERATION waging war on the Old Reactionary Order. But boomers rose to great power already by the 80s and totally took over by the 90s. But boomers still go on like they're 60s radical flower children. They seem to be blind to the fact that THEY are the freaking elite pushing all sorts of laws to control people.
This was one reason why NIXON by Stone is such a rich movie. When Stone was a young man, he blamed it all on Nixon and Nixon's generation. But when Stone looked at the new American reality under the sleazy presidency of Clinton--and when he pondered members of his generation that were doing all sorts of dirty stuff on Wall Street and of course, in his more thoughtful moments, he must have been wondering about his own excesses--, he must have wondered... 'are we really any better than our fathers and grandfathers?' At least Nixon had some kind of conscience, some sense of shame. But did Clinton feel any shame for all the sleazy things he did with China, Monica, and Marc Rich? None whatsoever. And the boomers also produced the worthless George W. Bush. (In a way, WALL STREET was more an indictment of radical greed of the boomers than of the earlier generation. Stone said of WALL STREET that his father's generation was more square and honest than the new generation that took over Wall Street in the 1980s. They were to business what Clinton was to politics. Though Reagan has often gotten the blame for the greedy 80s, the fact is Reagan's vision of economic freedom harked back to older days with different values. What Reagan unwittingly unleashed in the 80s was capitalism + the shameless libertine values of the 60s where guys like Milken acted like drug dealers without any sense of honor or shame. Though capitalism was seen as 'rightist', the new Wall Street class of the 80s were the children of the 60s. The new mentality and attitude can be seen in the Chance character in TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA. He's a boomer agent who wants to rock-n-roll through life.)
In a way, Stone himself cannot let go of his radical credentials. It defined him for too long. He finds it too fun. And his generation still doesn't wanna grow up. They keep harking back to the 60s--Dylan, Folkies, hippies, anti-war movement, civil rights, etc--as if those battles are still being fought. They still act like this country is under the rule of some vast rightwing conspiracy. They seem blind to the fact that even American conservatives have pretty much absorbed much of the social changes in the 60s. This is why American liberals are desperate to find new 'crises' and 'great causes' like 'gay marriage' and 'slut pride' to make themselves feel 'on the cutting edge, rebelling against the evil patriarchal order'.
And of course, blacks and other non-whites act the same way. They made great strides and gained great power. Asians dominate certain universities. And we have a mulatto president who is surrounded by fellow mulattos. Yet, the language they all speak is 'we must all unite to fight the great white evil'. Because of the victimology among Jewish, Asian, black, and brown elites, they never take any blame for all the bad shit they do. They always blame whites when whites do wrong(or even when whites don't do wrong), but if anyone points to foulness among non-whites, it's 'anti-semitic!' or 'racist!'.
As for white liberals boomers, many are part of the elite structure, but they're still acting like they're rebelling against their parents and grandparents who are either dead or old/ill. They still think it's Woodstock. It's pathetic.
But it's a common habit among the Left. Consider commies totally ruled the USSR in the 1930s, but Stalin saw 'counterrevolutionaries' everywhere. Mao totally ruled China in the 60s but he waged a campaign against 'capitalist roaders' and 'western spies'. Leftists and minority groups, having long defined themselves as victims and rebels, have a hard time psychologically adjusting to the fact they have the power. So, even communists in power keep looking for anti-communist enemies but remain blind to the corruption and excesses of communism itself.
But Sailer is right to point out the crucial factor of Jewish anxiety. If Jews were the solid majority in America, they might be willing to adjust to new realities. But no matter how powerful and rich they become, they still feel surrounded by a vast goy population. And so, they remain locked in a state of paranoia. Anglo-American elites in the past could relax more because they felt their power wasn't only financial and political but demographic.
"Where the Levins talk only to Cohens, and the Cohens talk only to God." We need some Brahminowitzes!
Not quite OT, Steve, have you seen this book about Portnoy's Complaint? The only review I've read said that it's interesting in places but that Avishai doesn't know enough about literature to understand a lot of what Roth's about. I don't know much about literature either, so I'll probably end up reading it.
http://www.drudgereport.com/flashcm.htm
Neocons to Romney: Go with Condie.
So, Romney goes for Failer Strategy than Sailer Strategy.
everyone should read Don Colacho's aphorisms. pure wisdom. just type it in google, won't regret it.
Well, I've always thought that David Brooks's columns on this subject seemed inherently self-contradictory: his very status as an NYT columnist totally disproves his claim of American meritocracy...
It could be that liberals and leftists have gotten more politically correct than ever because they became economically 'rightist'.
When liberals and leftists were anti-capitalist, they had simple/basic reasons for feeling 'progressive'. Capitalism was exploitative and oppressive, and progressives were WITH THE PEOPLE. But once liberals and leftists of the boomer generation embraced capitalism of the 80s and 90s--and worked on Wall Street, computers, big pharma, Hollywood, entertainment, catering, etc.--, they actually made even more money than rich people in the past. Children of communist Jews today make more than big time capitalists of previous generations. Since liberals and leftists made pact with the Devil of Greed, they need to find 'culture war' issues to maintain their progressive cred. Since they lost THE PEOPLE--the noble workers of the world--,their new morality is about fighting for 'equality' of fringe 'creative class' groups like gays. But gays are NOT oppressed in America, and if anything, far more privileged than any group but Jews.
So, it's come down to fighting for 'equality' for the most unequally privileged people in America--even to the point of changing the entire rules of marriage to satisfy their whims, which are even whimmier than Sailer's.
In other words, act like the Winkelvii and not like Mark Zuckerberg.
I doubt that Brooks was thinking about Jews, in particular. What would be the highest estimate of Jews in leading investment banks/hedge funds, etc.? Maybe the answer would prove me wrong, but I would guess 50-percent on the high end.
Short term enrichment pervades the WS culture, period. It is built into the compensation schemes. This is the primary driver, I believe. A few good years could bring early retirement and the downside could mean, at worst, finding a new job.
"It’s a different kind of noblesse oblige, pointed in somewhat different directions, but it is there and strong."
POLITICS AND THE BIMAH
PHILADELPHIA-AREA SYNAGOGUE’S PLANS TO HOST DNC CHAIRMAN DRAW SCRUTINY
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) is scheduled to appear in a Philadelphia-area synagogue Monday on behalf of the Obama for America campaign, fostering more concerns that Team Obama is engaging in a controversial and possibly illegal effort to win over Jewish voters from within their religious institutions.
Jewish Americans for Obama is slated to hold a campaign event Monday at the Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, a Philadelphia suburb. The synagogue is affiliated with the Jewish religion’s Reform movement, which is known for its progressive political activism.
The event will feature Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee, as well as Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D., Pa.) and Democratic County Commissioner Josh Shapiro.
...
In May, the Obama-aligned president of Miami’s Temple Israel refused to allow a prominent Republican congregant to rebut Wasserman Schultz’s remarks during a speech that was later cancelled. The battle prompted the congregant to quit the synagogue.
The Free Beacon later revealed that, during a board meeting in advance of Wasserman Schultz’s speech, Temple Israel members expressed reservations about giving the divisive political leader an unfiltered forum, concerns that were ultimately ignored.
Multiple sources have told the Free Beacon that the Obama campaign is intentionally targeting synagogues in a bid to shore up the Jewish vote.
...
politics-and-the-bimah/freebeacon.com politics-and-the-bimah
Jews aren't even close to a majority of the cultural elite. Many Irish Catholics are content to fuck this country over as well (Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Matthews, all the Kennedys, joe Biden, etc.) Other groups are strongly represented too.
If Jews were the problem, they'd be easily outnumbered. The problem is the nonjews.
Burke:"The age of chivalry is gone. -- That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold a generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, achieved defensive nations, the nurse of the manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness."
Thanks for posting this, Thursday.It has long been my favorite Burke quote. Indeed, I sometimes see it as a kind of litmus test for conservatives. If this statement moves you, if you feel its truth and force, you are a conservative.If it leaves you cold and inert, you are something else altogether, regardless of what you say.
Syon
"The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations."
Brooks: Our elites stink.
Murray: Our beerbellites stink.
The problem isn't only with the elites but the beerbellites. I mean in the old days, when most poor folks were moralistic, God-fearing, and family-oriented, I can understand why the elites wanted to do things for them. And the poor were really poor back then.
Today, we have fat poor folks whose asses rumble as they walk down Walmart. We have crazy Negroes. We have white trash acting who feel no shame and have kids out of wedlock. and etc.
I mean how can anyone cultivate a stewardship mentality over such lowlifes?
How do today's Jewish elites differ from yesteryear's WASP elites in terms of their sense of noblesse oblige? It looks like the same attitude occurs in both: Jewish elites don't care about outsourcing American jobs, but they'll donate hundreds of millions of dollars to a hospital or university in memory of their parents.
Similarly, the WASP Robber Barons screwed over their workers (paying them in company scrip sometimes, hiring goons to beat them up when they tried to form unions, etc.), but endowed lavish libraries and museums. In both cases, there's a lack of empathy for average American workers, but a noblesse oblige to community institutions.
Sailer misreads Jews. Jews go from the tribal to the Universal without stopping at Nationalism. This is why Jews obsessively support immigration. It may hurt gentile Americans a little but it REALLY benefits some immigrant from the 3rd World. That's why Jews already think they're practicing noblise oblige - but its to the world just to the USA.
Yeah, tough break for the white gentiles.
"Instead of a felt loyalty to their fellow Americans on questions like immigration policy, they feel obligated to help foreigners and would-be Americans, who are, after all, generally less fortunate than Americans.
It’s a different kind of noblesse oblige, pointed in somewhat different directions, but it is there and strong.
------------------------------
Well-said, the Jew Elite is about doing what's fair and right for all of mankind, not just privileged Americans."
I agree that this is the "self-serving rationale" that Jews tell themselves and others to defend their attitudes and political actions.
But isn't the real reason that Jews like lots of minorites because they feel safer in polyglot communites where they can blend in like New York which to them is the future model of America.
I mean if they loved the minorites of the world so much why don't they welcome them into Israel instead of rioting and holding pogroms against the "illegal infiltrators" and forcibly deporting them?
Have any American Jews criticized Jews in Israel for their recent actions?
Not very loudly I am afraid.
Is it perhaps because the Tribe is the most astonishing group of hypocrites who ever lived?
Wages have been stagnant in the U.S. since about the time of the 1965 Hart-Cellar Immigration Act and federal, state, and municipal governments are now all bordering on insolvency.
On top of that throw in 20% unemployment and the highest incarceration rate in the world.
Mayberry is no more.
Thanks.
Regretably, I was raised a Philo-Semite, but I now see that many of ideas promoted and championed by influential jews such as free trade (Wall Street Jews), open borders, political correctness and cultural marxism (academic Jews), and wars to spread democracy in the Middle East (neo-cons) have destroyed my country.
And the Jews wonder why like clock work host populations run out of patience with them.
"Well-said, the Jew Elite is about doing what's fair and right for all of mankind, not just privileged Americans."
And what if their judgement about what is fair and right is wrong? Isn't this a grotesquely arrogant statement? And why are Americans privileged and thus a target for this abuse? Seems very convenient... If your claim is right, does that make it true that that elite is adversarial to Americans, making it right for Americans to be adversarial to that elite? Claiming to know how to "do right for all mankind" has lead to perhaps the greatest evils of the last century; that claim should be considered a hallmark of ideas of great evil.
Steve! You stole my thunder!
This is a brilliant and insightful post, Steve. It hits the nail on the head about what is wrong with most of the Western world.
Burke:"The age of chivalry is gone. -- That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold a generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, achieved defensive nations, the nurse of the manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness."
Thanks for posting this, Thursday.It has long been my favorite Burke quote. Indeed, I sometimes see it as a kind of litmus test for conservatives. If this statement moves you, if you feel its truth and force, you are a conservative.If it leaves you cold and inert, you are something else altogether, regardless of what you say.
I consider myself pretty much a liberal, but this statement definitely moves me, which is why I find most liberals to be detestable.
This isn't the time to look it up and quote itg but HL Mencken wrote the same thing REALLY clearly about 90 years ago.
As a Jew myself perhaps I can't be trusted to point out that the meritocratic greedy ones without loyalty to their fellow citizens aren't - and weren't - solely Jews but I do think that the semitic aspect of the thing is less a causal matter than a casual one.
Note, if the elites are gay (as they increasingly are) they have literally no interest in the future of america.
Frank Winston said...
I don't understand why he necessarily has to be talking about elite Jews here. Isn't he talking about all the elites, many of which are Jews but many of which are also WASPs? Are there really more Jews in the elite class than WASPs these days?
If you had read Brooks book " Bobos in Paradise " you would realize that he is euphemistically describing Jews. An entire chapter is devoted to the NYT Wedding Pages and how they differ from the WASPy 1950-1960's compared to today's elite marriage pages ( Circa 2000, when the book came out ) which is often Jewish or half Jewish. He describes "The Graduate" which was directed by Mike Nichols and starring Dustin Hoffman has defining how non-WASPs viewed the WASP establishment then in terminal decline. He points out that Nichols originally wanted Robert Redford to be Benjamin, but then states that non-WASPs wouldn't have been able to relate to someone who looked like in his words " An Aryan Dick Diver type ". In fact the entire book can be read as paen to how much better today's " meritiocratic establishment " is then the supposedly inbred WASP establishment of yesteryear. It looks like to me he now sees the downside of having a meritocratic establishment unchained by tradition and is having second thoughts, but he can't say it directly to his intended audience.
The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service.
Don't you-all agree that Richard Nixon lived up to the code of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity by resigning from office for a relatively minor offense that Bubba and Ma Clinton or Barry H. Soetero would have shrugged off and skated on by?
Well-said, the Jew Elite is about doing what's fair and right for all of mankind, not just privileged Americans.
They they can start first by helping me with their money.
It's good to point out that the incessant pro 3rd world immigration propaganda is something backed by Jewish elites, not so much by the Jewish rank and file. Opposition to mass immigration and the like is at 50% and growing among average Jews.
The religion of Frankfurt School PC has always held within its very goals the seeds of its own destruction. Seeing that and pointing out the fact is a worthwhile endeavor, likely to bring about its end sooner. If what goes unsaid goes unthought, what is said will be thought, discussed and if correct, grow in influence.
Someone here commented that Steve doesn't understand survival of the fittest, but as long as himself and his kids are safe, fed and clothed, what is the issue? In the long run, who will be remembered in 100 years time? I know the name of Galileo, but I could not tell you the name of the Pope or anyone else in the orthodoxy who opposed him.
Similarly, in 100 years time the names of Sailer, Murray and possibly even MacDonald will be in bold while the names of Gould, Gladwell and the like will be mentioned mostly in the punchlines of jokes.
The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations..but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service.
Sure, SOME of said WASP elites, particularly in the religious sphere. But a large number of others were just the opposite. They pursued ruthless short-term advantage to the detriment of long-term well being, and showed little restraint in corruption, avarice and even outright mass murder. The history of the American West furnishes several examples- from extortionate railroad construction practices, to laughably bogus Indian "treaties" engineered to appropriate Indian land solemnly "guaranteed" in earlier "treaties."
Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character. Most of their problems can be traced to this. .. these people are brats; they have no sense that they are guardians for an institution the world depends on; they have no consciousness of their larger social role.
^^There never was this golden age of Wall Street where it hired all these men of integrity and restraint. Wall Street has always hired and rewarded greedy, amoral brats. Whether it be the scandals of the pre Great Depression era to the scandals of Reagan era Wall Street, Brock evokes a mythical world of virtue that never existed on Wall Street.
American Jews should start thinking of themselves less as oppressed outcasts who need to go for whatever they can get while the getting is good, and start more accurately thinking of themselves as belonging to the best-connected inner circle of the contemporary American Establishment.
Partially agree, but Jews have also correctly analyzed that some of the high-minded noblesse oblige of the WASP elite is self-serving, self-interest. It was in the interest of WASP elites for decades for example to lock Jews out of certain high ranked educational institutions (using a variety of subtle mechanisms) so that their lesser skilled sons and daughters could get slots rather than better JEws. Furthermore Jews have always been in the noblesse oblige mix, sometimes providing noblesse oblige (and more importantly- hard cash) where local WASP elites provided none. In the Jim Crow South for example it was Jewish dollars under Jewish entrepreneur Julius Rosenwald that helped build over 25% of the schools for black kids prior to the 1940s, sometimes in the teeth of local WASP opposition. It is true that the blacks put up the sweat equity, the land and part of the cash when they had it and thus deserve the lions share of the credit- but it is a cold fact that many of these schools would not have been built if the Jews did not collaborate with the Blacks to end-run local racist WASP elites.
Canaday sez:
Instead of a felt loyalty to their fellow Americans on questions like immigration policy, they feel obligated to help foreigners and would-be Americans, who are, after all, generally less fortunate than Americans.
Who says Jews feel no loyalty towards their fellow Aemricans? ANd if white NON JEws are so patriotic, why are they in the forefront of hiring millions of illegal workers that sometimes drive down local wages and increase public costs (via health care, law enforcement etc), and displace thousands of white "fellow Americans" out of jobs? All those farmers and construction contractors filling their work sites with lower-wage illegals sure ain't Jews.
"Don't you-all agree that Richard Nixon lived up to the code of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity by resigning from office for a relatively minor offense that Bubba and Ma Clinton or Barry H. Soetero would have shrugged off and skated on by?"
Nixon said what cannot be said: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2UrqCp9K1I
" Frank Winston said...
I don't understand why he necessarily has to be talking about elite Jews here. Isn't he talking about all the elites, many of which are Jews but many of which are also WASPs? Are there really more Jews in the elite class than WASPs these days?"
Influence is measured in mass not numbers. If it was about numbers, nobody would fear their judgment.
My guess is that the Scots-Irish gone in too deep on the victim narrative to give it up. And at this point, its worked so well for them, and continues to do so, so why would they change?
The American Experiment was severely disrupted by early 20th century immigration from portions of Europe that supported theocracy during the Protestant Reformation and Enlightenment. This resulted in the centralization of powers during the 20th century replacing the laboratory of the States with strong central governmental control, in direct contravention of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.
^^Dubious. How was the "American Experiment" disrupted by the immigration of thousands of hard working Italians pray tell? ANd "supporting theocracy" was a big time occupation of WASP types like Puritans who sought to establish their own brand of "theocracy" on AMerican soil. And contentious tension between strong centralism and states decentralization is old news in US history- long BEFORE any mass immigration of Jews, Italians and other "hyphenated" types in the early 20th century. You really need to brush up on your history.
This then resulted in the immigration liberalizations of the last half of the 20th century and the present condition in which massive amnesty programs for illegal immigrants are routinely proposed and passed as a means of importing not only labor but voters and activists from cultures that have no history of successfully resisting theocratic rule.
Sure today's immigration situation is a mess, and yes we are importing people that may not necessarily share ALL ideals of traditional US culture and patriotism (a point that goes for NON Hispanic immigrants as well). But it has little to do with theocracy, and much more to do with profit maximization, including profit maximization by WASP types who have found they can do quitenwell by displacing American workers and lowering wages in certain sectors by hiring more illegals. These people are much more relevant - not alleged "papist theocrats."
That this pro-theocratic liberalization came primarily from the founding culture of Western theocracy, Judaism, is an important, if heretical, topic under the current theocracy that dominates thought in the United States..
^^Equally dubious. JEws have been in the forefront of numerous ANTI-RELIGIOUS, ANTI-THEOCRATIC movements. A JEw like Karl Marx did not give a damn about Judaism.
Jews don't live in the town and cities affected by floods of immigrants. Their children don't go to schools full of NAMS nor immigrants, immigrants who don't even want to learn the language because, after all, their country is so close they can go back at least once or twice a year. Jews are urban (or affluent suburban) and as such are insulated from even seeing what problems are created by their academic and Pollyanish ideology.
^^Dubious. You seem to forget a city called New York. And as a matter of fact most white NON-JEWS do not go to school "full of NAMS or immigrants" either.
"Jews don't live in the town and cities affected by floods of immigrants..."
- I don't know, New York City has a pretty strong rep as an immigrant magnet, even today.
As regards that Burke quote: that situation never existed.
I recently read an article about an English historian who works outside the University establishment in Britain. He has written a book called a "Travel Guide to Medieval England" or something like that. I read a quote by him about a fellow named John Arundel, Marshal of England, ancestor of Percy Shelley. Wikipedia has a section on this fellow, which I'll excerpt here:
"Commanding a force with the purpose of bringing relief to the Duke of Brittany, Sir John was compelled to wait for stronger winds. During this wait he decided to take refuge in a nunnery, where his men "took no notice of the sanctity of the place and... violently assaulted and raped"[3] those they found inside. Further to this Sir John "allowed his men to ransack the countryside as they liked and to impoverish the people".[3]
When the force eventually set out to sea, carrying with them goods stolen from a nearby church and under a pronouncement of excommunication from the wronged priests, the expedition was caught in a storm. Thomas Walsingham reports that during the panic of the storm, Sir John murdered those of his men who refused to make for shore for fear of being shipwrecked upon the rocks.
Subsequently, after safely arriving on an island off the Irish coast, Sir John and his boat captain were swept back into the sea and drowned.[3]
According to Thomas Walsingham's story, FitzAlan's men profaned a convent at or near Southampton, and carried off vi vel sponte many of its occupants. The fleet was then pursued by a violent tempest, when the wretched nuns who had been carried off were thrown overboard to lighten the ships.
The vessels were, however, wrecked on the Irish coast, near Scariff according to some authorities, but at Cape Clear Island according to others. Sir John Arundell, together with his esquires, and other men of high birth, were drowned, and twenty-five ships were lost with most of their crews. Froissart's account of the event differs essentially from Walsingham's, in the omission of the story of the desecration of the convent."
According to the historian, there is one addition to the story. After desecrating the convent, and raping the nuns, the bored members of this party crashed a wedding. They killed the attendees, including the bridegroom, and took turns gang raping the bride.
I might note that all this action took place in England (Southampton). That's that wacky ancien regime and their noblesse oblige for you.
"Don't you-all agree that Richard Nixon lived up to the code of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity by resigning from office for a relatively minor offense that Bubba and Ma Clinton or Barry H. Soetero would have shrugged off and skated on by?"
The problem is he committed a criminal crime than a legal crime. There's a whole bunch of crime that comes with legal protection. But Watergate was burglary pure and simple. Fast and Furious was government policy gone bad. Watergate was just downright criminal and that's that.
And it should be said Nixon was NOT your typical wasp. His enemies were not only Jews but the Eastern Wasp Establishment who saw him as a West Coast upstart of Quaker origin. And he went to Duke, not Harvard and Yale. And I think to that extent, Oliver Stone kinda sympathized with him. Nixon was an outsider-king. Just like Alexander the Macedonian wasn't really accepted by Greeks, Nixon was really accepted by East Coast Establishment. So, just as Alexander reached outside Greece, Nixon favored foreign policy over domestic policy.
The Gekko guy in Wall Street is also both villain and hero. Villain as greedy son of a bitch. But hero as an outsider who played it harder to make it in a system ruled by established insiders. There is some of that in SCARFACE as well.
"I don't know about that. Good breeding over many generations can (and I think did) produce better results than a single generation of meritocratic sieving. Farmers have been applying this insight to agriculture for 10,000 years now."
- I know when I'm considering which can of pinto beans at Shoprite to buy, I think,"which one of these little bastards went to finishing school?"
" Jack said...
Jews aren't even close to a majority of the cultural elite. Many Irish Catholics are content to fuck this country over as well (Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Matthews, all the Kennedys, joe Biden, etc.) Other groups are strongly represented too.
If Jews were the problem, they'd be easily outnumbered. The problem is the nonjews."
That's the best you got? Biden Irish? If you say so. They have great influence? When Ireland bombs England and the entire congress supports the action as an expression of Ireland's right to exist and then votes to send billions of worth of support, I might buy your case. Why don't you mention Sean Hannity who can't construct a sentence without the clause "and our good friend Israel."? Hey Sean, what about Ireland - where's your loyalty?
David Brooks must secretly read the Ulsterman Report. Maybe he is the Wall Street Insider.
Naaaahhhh....
^^Equally dubious. JEws have been in the forefront of numerous ANTI-RELIGIOUS, ANTI-THEOCRATIC movements. A JEw like Karl Marx did not give a damn about Judaism.
I don't buy that the atheist Jews non-religious. They have all the same moral absolutism and passionate devotion to Jewish causes that the religious ones do, just they believe in one fewer god. For my money, that doesn't qualify as non-religion. I find it reminiscent of how some Christian bible-thumper types declare that the solution to our present woes as conservatives is to resurrect Christianity. That might benefit the cause of Christianity, but it wouldn't do much for conservatism.
Christianity has been the religion which has united the white race for 1500 years. It created the pleasant and just societies that the whole world yearns to live within. To dismiss it in a heartbeat is anything but conservative. I concede that Anti Christian white societies never had any immigration problems, but the natives wanted to escape. The verdict is still out on the lapsed Christian white societies. Would a Catholic France have allowed a Muslim incursion - not unless they converted.
Sunbeam said:
After desecrating the convent, and raping the nuns, the bored members of this party crashed a wedding. They killed the attendees, including the bridegroom, and took turns gang raping the bride.
WTF!? And this Sir John guy was Lord Marshall of England? Well that is the flip side, although I agree with Brooks/Sailer that there have been members of the elite class with a more responsible approach.
Jack said...
Jews aren't even close to a majority of the cultural elite. Many Irish Catholics are content to fuck this country over as well (Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Matthews, all the Kennedys, joe Biden, etc.) Other groups are strongly represented too.
Would not paint a broad brush as such against ALL Irish, but your point finds some support from historians who show a pattern where many Irish were all too willing to shaft their fellow white Americans when it suited them. Hence the corrupt Irish machines that controlled jobs, cash and bureaucratic favors in important cities maneuvered to freeze out other white Americans. QUOTE:
As early as 1855 Irish men were the largest group of the cartmen of New York, including those that specialized in doing city work on sanitation, landfill road projects and the like. To be a private cartman one required a license; to work for the municipal government in particular one needed good connections. Even before the massive influx of the feminine Irish in 1843, the Democrat-dominated Common Council gave a large number of market licenses to Irish men, much to the chagrin of native American entrepreneurs."
--FROM: Bayor and Meagher 1996, The New York Irish, 96-97
Some criticize Jews as "out for themselves" but Jews are hardly front-runners in the self-serving corruption of other white immigrant groups. In fact Jews were sometimes the victims. On New York's Lower East side in the 19th century for example it was not uncommon for Jewish VICTIMS of crime to be arrested by Irish cops, while the criminals were allowed to go free or escape (Sowell 1981).
The problem is he committed a criminal crime than a legal crime. There's a whole bunch of crime that comes with legal protection. But Watergate was burglary pure and simple. Fast and Furious was government policy gone bad. Watergate was just downright criminal and that's that.
Horrors. I just might wet my pants.
Partisan politics spilling over into stupid petty burglaries versus policy choices that result in pretextual wars and militarized criminal gangs. Yeah, the choice is obvious.
I concede that Anti Christian white societies never had any immigration problems, but the natives wanted to escape.
Does everyone want to escape Germany, Norway, Sweden, etc.? Most people in these countries are pretty anti-Christian, and they have some of the highest standards of living in the world.
The verdict is still out on the lapsed Christian white societies. Would a Catholic France have allowed a Muslim incursion - not unless they converted.
The real question is: would a non-Christian country allow themselves to be governed by a predominantly Jewish elite? The fact that Christians view Jews as "God's chosen people" and Israel as the "Holy Land" makes it much easier for Jews to hold power here in Christian America than in secular Europe.
"Some criticize Jews as "out for themselves" but Jews are hardly front-runners in the self-serving corruption of other white immigrant groups. In fact Jews were sometimes the victims. On New York's Lower East side in the 19th century for example it was not uncommon for Jewish VICTIMS of crime to be arrested by Irish cops, while the criminals were allowed to go free or escape (Sowell 1981)."
Okay, let's see if an Irish American can answer this accusation the way a Jew might, "Dear Mr. O'Kelly, CEO of Large Publishing Company, it is clear Mr. Sowell is Anti-Celtic, please make sure he is never heard from again, or else. See you at Mass on Sunday."
If David Brooks still has his job in a week, nobody who matters understood what he nearly said.
If David Brooks has slid down the same chute as Rick Sanchez in a week, they got it.
"WTF!? And this Sir John guy was Lord Marshall of England? Well that is the flip side, although I agree with Brooks/Sailer that there have been members of the elite class with a more responsible approach."
Yup. And his brother was the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The rich really are different from you and me.
I kind of doubt the descendants of this class of men have the same fire in the belly though. It's all memos and redundancy notices and the City of London now.
If they bother to work at all.
But back in the day they thugged out in a way Compton, California could not possibly imagine.
And these guys were probably soft compared to the previous social system extant in Western Europe after the Fall of Rome.
Many a commenter:
"Instead of a felt loyalty to their fellow Americans on questions like immigration policy, they feel obligated to help foreigners and would-be Americans, who are, after all, generally less fortunate than Americans."
Would-be Israelis are not that lucky, though.
"True to some extent, but he's also making a generational point about boomers. The boomer generation grew up as the RADICAL GENERATION waging war on the Old Reactionary Order. But boomers rose to great power already by the 80s and totally took over by the 90s. But boomers still go on like they're 60s radical flower children. They seem to be blind to the fact that THEY are the freaking elite pushing all sorts of laws to control people."
Somebody did a computer study and found that, unsurprisingly, radical activity at universities in the 60s was highly correlated with how Jewish its student population was. It's worth considering that smart, radical Jewish kids, in particular those with an activist upbringing, essentially sized the leadership of their generation back when they were ugrads (and all quite openly about it and, as Steve points out, often boasting about it).
The huge new universities after WWII, with few old traditions, and new young faculty competely overwhelmed numerically, were entirely undefended against such aggressiveness. Dewey's grand concept of a meritocracy based around the university turned out to be quite wrong because he hadn't factored in such possibilities. And yeah, it certainly wasn't all a problem due to Jews, there were plenty of others, but as a whole the really did play an out-of-proportion role in storming the hill.
Deluded or self-deceiving commenters:
"It’s a different kind of noblesse oblige, pointed in somewhat different directions, but it is there and strong."
Thus, shouldn't the U.S.A. emulate the famed Jewish generosity?
"I don't understand why he necessarily has to be talking about elite Jews here. Isn't he talking about all the elites, many of which are Jews but many of which are also WASPs? Are there really more Jews in the elite class than WASPs these days?"
As a previous commentator noted in his line about honorary Jews like Sean Hannity, Jewish dominance of 20th century culture has ensured that we're all effectively Jews until we take the Red pills.
Interesting that some liberal commentators on the NYT column really do get it and go on to object with a catalogue of what eugenicists, racists, etc, the Henry Ford WASPs were. Thus they provide some of the most unintentionally racist arguments you could ever read.
Gilbert Pinfold.
WASPs driving Volvos? In england, the Volvo brand has thrived for years (especially pre Lexus) on specifically not being German. You wouldn't see too many Fords in Golders Green either.
Who cares what Brooks thinks the elite should do, the real problem is not that the old elite no longer exists, it's that the nation no longer exists. The old elite actually represented and were members of the culture of a (very real) nation, it's impossible for the new elite to represent the non-culture of this new multi-racial empire. Multi-racial, multicultural empires require a police state to hold together and it is inevitable that they will degenerate into a sordid scramble to take resources from other, more productive groups in the empire. The result for the productive is a type of slavery, or slavery for the masses if the elite get the upper hand. Who cares if the elite run this squalid system efficiently?
WASPs driving Volvos?
WASPs traditionally drove beat up Buicks and the like.
Sure, SOME of said WASP elites,
As opposed to how many jews?
There never was this golden age of Wall Street where it hired all these men of integrity and restraint. Wall Street has always hired and rewarded greedy, amoral brats.
So you say. Nevertheless it is no stretch to believe that the WASPs in the back of their minds knew this country as theirs to steward.
It was in the interest of WASP elites for decades for example to lock Jews out of certain high ranked educational institutions (using a variety of subtle mechanisms) so that their lesser skilled sons and daughters could get slots rather than better JEws.
Better? For whom? Perhaps they had the foresight to see what would happen to the country.
Furthermore Jews have always been in the noblesse oblige mix, sometimes providing noblesse oblige (and more importantly- hard cash) where local WASP elites provided none.
Not everyone benefits from college; well, except for the banks. And the bloat on the college staff.
Most would be better off doing productive work earlier. This goes for general population too. As Jews are aware, the difference in aptitude is there.
Who says Jews feel no loyalty towards their fellow Aemricans?
How would you describe your stance toward the WASPs here? Loyalty?
?^^Dubious. How was the "American Experiment" disrupted by the immigration of thousands of hard working Italians pray tell? ANd "supporting theocracy" was a big time occupation of WASP types like Puritans who sought to establish their own brand of "theocracy" on AMerican soil. And contentious tension between strong centralism and states decentralization is old news in US history- long BEFORE any mass immigration of Jews, Italians and other "hyphenated" types in the early 20th century. You really need to brush up on your history.
Ethnic differences don't just mean you are awesome unlike those evil WASPs.
Sure today's immigration situation is a mess, and yes we are importing people that may not necessarily share ALL ideals of traditional US culture and patriotism (a point that goes for NON Hispanic immigrants as well). But it has little to do with theocracy, and much more to do with profit maximization, including profit maximization by WASP types who have found they can do quitenwell by displacing American workers and lowering wages in certain sectors by hiring more illegals. These people are much more relevant - not alleged "papist theocrats."
Then very simple. We close the borders. Have any thoughts, hmm?
Dubious. You seem to forget a city called New York. And as a matter of fact most white NON-JEWS do not go to school "full of NAMS or immigrants" either.
What he means is that Jews certainly have the means to insulate themselves from the actual squalor and crime, and do so. That is for the other folks. How many Jews rub cheek by jowl with "youths" in, say, the inner cities, as students of the same class?
sunbeam:
I might note that all this action took place in England (Southampton). That's that wacky ancien regime and their noblesse oblige for you.
And yet others were rulers of the land, not him.
As far as ancestry goes, it is not surprising for those with masculinity to have sired a great part of today's descendants. Especially one who did so much raping.
"The outrage, the disgust inspired in my parents by the gentiles, was beginning to make some sense: the goyim pretended to be something special, while we were their moral superiors. And what made us superior was precisely the hatred and the disrespect they lavished so willingly upon us!"
"Only what about the hatred we lavished upon them?"
Steve's right: it's all in Portnoy's Complaint. And anything that isn't in there is in White Noise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHw90NYdwyI&feature=related
If the noblesse oblige of the Jewish elite is directed at helping torrents of third worlders into the countries in which they hold sway, it seems a poorly thought out strategy to say the least.
Are all goyim created equal? Jews have several thousand years of success, on average, living in diaspora within European countries. Sure, they have been temporarily kicked out now and then but on average, European success has been Jewish success.
Contrast that with the other ethnicities they have brought in to European countries. Do Jews have several thousand years of success living in diaspora within China? How about in Africa? Can they pass as Chinese or black African as they can pass for Europeans? Are these ethnicities as tolerant of Jewish influence?
Let's look at some ethnic enclave suburbs and cities within European cities as a microcosm for the great race replacement experiment that they would extend throughout the European world. Are Jews the exalted rulers within Chinatowns? Do they control the Chinese language press and media? Is Detroit going to be the second coming of New York City as a center for Jewish imminence? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see it.
I would argue that Jews have evolved to be particularly suited to a diaspora life within European host countries, and that the recent abandonment of Europeans by the Jewish elite in favor of every other race under the sun makes as much sense as if our farmers were to suddenly abandon cows in favor of lizards.
They have chosen not to conserve their Christian culture and the echoes of that culture are fading. It is up in the air what they will become.
Maybe the positive traits of these cultures have to do with something other than Christianity.
Kind of reminds me of the later Roman empire. Initially the empire was controlled by the old Roman aristocracy of ancient wealthy families. But in the late 2nd century Septimus Severus, a general of North African origin, seized power and abolished the all-Italian, privileged Praetorian Guard. After that Rome's leaders tended to be generals who had risen in the ranks, often of humble and ethnically non-Italian origin. These leaders, while often more competent and certainly less prone to insanity than the old aristocrats, often had little loyalty to anything but themselves and their own family. There was a constant churn of military coups and rebellions, and often fighting off the barbarians took second priority to fighting internal power struggles. In 406, when the frontier in Gaul collapsed (as it turned out, permanently) in the face of a massive barbarian onslaught, the Emperor Honorius mostly devoted his efforts to defeating a usurping general who had chosen this time to make a grab at the throne.
The Roman aristocracy was in some ways enlightened in allowing humble provincials to rise to high rank in the Roman army, but it created the conditions for its own downfall.
Brooks seems more accurate than Sailer here. Both Sailer and Brooks are really talking about the new, bratty, vicious elites. Brooks is talking explicitly about the new elites; Sailer is talking explicitly about an ethnie that makes up a disproportionately large (but still usually minority) segment of most elites, and the majority of which (of the ethnie) is not elite. So Brooks is naming exactly the set of people that's relevant - new elites - while Sailer is explicitly naming another set of people which only partly overlaps the set that's relevant.
.Interesting that some liberal commentators on the NYT column really do get it
Not a shock to Isteve readers.
Well-said, the Jew Elite is about doing what's fair and right for all of mankind, not just privileged Americans."
really, so why don't they start divesting themselves from access to privilege and power? why concentrate on the 'privileged ' american middle and working class?
They must keep reminding us over and over: the new elite is "more talented"... meanwhile the American decline accelerates. This is classic Orwellian doublethink.
Actual talented elites usher in an age of ascendency. But these elites are wrecking America.
Of course it's a Big Lie.
"And it should be said Nixon was NOT your typical wasp. His enemies were not only Jews but the Eastern Wasp Establishment who saw him as a West Coast upstart of Quaker origin. And he went to Duke, not Harvard and Yale."
He was accepted to Harvard, on scholarship, but his family couldn't afford the travel and living expenses.
From newworldencyclopedia.org:
Nixon attended Fullerton High School and Whittier High School. He graduated first in his class; showing a penchant for Shakespeare and Latin. He won a full tuition scholarship from Harvard University; but since it did not cover living expenses, Nixon's family was unable to afford to send him away to college. Nixon attended Whittier College, a local Quaker school where he co-founded the Orthogonian Society, a fraternity that competed with the already established Franklin Society. Nixon was elected student body president. A lifelong football fan, Nixon practiced with the team assiduously but spent most of his time on the bench. In 1934, he graduated second in his class from Whittier and went on to Duke University School of Law, where he received a full scholarship.
Anti-gnostic:
A huge amount of this comes down to political balance. Clinton lied in court about fucking the help, and got impeached. Bush ran a network of secret prisons/torture chambers and turned Echelon against the American people, and faced no serious consequences. Fast and Furious would be a scandal worthy of impeaching and removing the president if and only if the Republcians had enough votes to manage it. Since they don't, it won't turn out to be that important.
And the consensus of the ruling class is clearly (and understandably) that serious crimes by the elites should never almost result in jail, and should only rarely result in losing a job. Similarly, monumental fuck-ups by the elites should never lose them their job. (Ask yourself how Tim Geithner got his job. Or how Jamie Dixon stil has his.). Personal scandals can lose them their jobs, but mere breaking of the law on a massive scale, defrauding millions of people, or killing or imprisoning nobodies without much reason are just not enough.
It's easy to see why the elites like this idea. If I were a CEO or high ranking politician, I, too, would want everyone to agree that no crime I committed or oversaw would ever be bad enough to send me to prison or take away the riches I'd piled up in my years of power. I, too, would want everyone to agree that even monumental fuckups and scandals on my watch were not reason for me to lose my job. I'd want that knowledge that overseeing a disaster meant failing upward.
But what I don't understand is why so many non-elite Americans go for it. Perhaps it's understandable why media types do--they are often paid shills of rich, powerful people, after all, and some of them aspire to be elites themselves some day. But why does this insane idea play so well among normal Americans? I suspect some of this is tribalism along Democrat/Republican lines, but mostly, I imagine it's the fact that most people swallow whatever line of propaganda they're surrounded with for a long time, and the rich and powerful have been using their shills to preach this line for a long time. (Remember: disbarring someone for something we would call war crimes if done by a foreigner would be "criminalizing policy differences," taking away the bonuses of CEOs who presided over leading the global economy to the brink of collapse and had to be bailed out by the feds would be "class warfare," etc. )
I think David Gelernter is saying basically the same thing in his new book "America - Lite".
http://www.amazon.com/America-Lite-Imperial-Academia-Dismantled-Obamacrats/dp/1594036063/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342384715&sr=8-1&keywords=david+gelernter
It's self-deception, which is driven by a desire to avoid revealing or admitting to non-elites that you rule over them. Admitting it to yourself while not admitting it to others is psychologically taxing. It's better to avoid even admitting it to yourself altogether - hence self-deception.
There are also issues of legitimacy, freedom, self-determination, etc. People tend not to want other groups to have power over them. Even if non-elites don't know the ethnic composition of elites, many of them rail at the elites as being "liberals" or "insiders" i.e. as a different group.
Stevie sweetie, you're no good at subterfuge and you shouldn't try. This "the jews should allow criticism" argument is just silly and really is beneath you. Why on earth would they want to diminish their power? Afterall, it's not like glasnost and perestroika did much for the Soviet union and it's not like the liberal tolerance(a thin veneer though it was) did much for the WASPs either. You simply don't have the guile to pull this kind of thing off so you should stop banging that drum before you make a fool of yourself.
Stop banging the "we should abolish affirmative action for everyone except blacks and Indians" drum to. You're not fooling anyone. Stick to what you know.
Speaking on behalf of my people...
Being leftist is a perfectly good position for Irish-Americans. America treated us like trash so we acted like trash. If leftism can help de-WASP America Irish people should be very leftist. My concern is that we should try to get on the Affirmative action gravy train. After-all we were way more oppressed than some of the sob stories I here about these days.
I hope that as a long term survival strategy for the Irish we integrate with the Hispanics and gain power that way. Think this is a bit amoral? Well karma's a bitch isn't she.
The irony is that Irish recalcitrance was never inevitable. It is solely the function of Anglo racism. Italians in Italy have the mafia to but the Irish are a fairly docile unspectacular people. Not as honest as say the Finns but more so than say... the French.
Much of Brooks is just rewriting the Closing of the American Mind. THe "Judaicization of the elites" is just his version of Bloom's "Teutonization of the Elites" from COAM.
And it would be easy to argue that my frankness is too abrasive, that Brooks' vague euphemisms are better for getting our mutual message out.
Sweet Hesus, if you're too abrasive, what does that make me? Radioactive?
It is solely the function of Anglo racism.
Micks are generally a bunch of racists. Leftoid-racist, and against "Anglos," but racist.
"I hope that as a long term survival strategy for the Irish we integrate with the Hispanics and gain power that way."
Ah, the Irish! Good thing I got some Irish in me, whenever I snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, I know what to blame! Dude (I hear that's an Irish word, probably at one time "illegal", is that cool or what?), like we really hear a lot about those Irish in the US Army that deserted to fight for Mexico in the Mexican-American war, what did they call that, the Saint Patrick's Battalion? And how about those 25,000 Irish who intended to invade Canada, they ended up calling that the Fenian raids, it's sure disappeared down the old memory hole.
A little math suggests that you integrate with the Hispanics in the western hemisphere (do you get the potential size of that population?) and you are going to be as genetically forgotten, disappeared in no time, as obscure a footnote as those Fenians or the Batallón de San Patricio. Erin go bragh!
"Maybe the positive traits of these cultures have to do with something other than Christianity."
Could be, but the prevailing religion of a nation is a big chunk of culture to abandon and the abandonment is not conservative.
Maybe all their citizens are acting on the instructions of very benign parasites, or maybe they lack malevolent ones.
We'll see how the future generations turn out when only classics majors have a passing knowledge of The Golden Rule and the parables. Secular cultures are relatively new. What values will inform the consciences of the future?
I will concede that being non-Muslim and non-voodoo Immediately makes a nation a better place to exist, I'm just not sure about non-Christian.
Personally, I feel less ridiculous praying at Chartes than at Lenin's Tomb - but I'm a throwback.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9391998/Why-antibiotics-are-losing-the-war-against-bacteria.html
uh oh
irishman: Speaking on behalf of my people...
The idiot half...
Being leftist is a perfectly good position for Irish-Americans.
The stupid ones. Observing several generations on the Irish side of my family, I've long noted a strong positive correlation between IQ and all-around life success, and lack of attraction to leftism. It's the stupid and feckless ones who have a big emo investment in all that "no Irish need apply" bull crap. Beats working, I guess.
America treated us like trash so we acted like trash.
You sound like certain distant cousins of mine who get tossed out of Irish-side family reunions for...acting like trash. They're really noble souls, you see, it's just that the rest of us force them to act like trash. Or is it the English? The blame appears to shift around depending on levels of inebriation. At any rate, somebody out there "thinks they're better than them", and they aren't going to stand (unsteadily) for that!
If leftism can help de-WASP America Irish people should be very leftist.
What wonders are going to befall all us mourning and weeping non-English when America is finally, thoroughly de-WASPed? Nobody's ever quite explained that one to me.
You know, if your ancestors hated WASPs so much, they could have migrated to any number of non-WASP dominated countries in the New World. Plenty did. Just like all those other emigrant ethnic groups who've now convinced themselves that they Made America What It Is in Spite of Evil WASP Hegemony. (Or rather, was, in its glory days.) Oddly, these same superior specimens who Made America Great didn't have the same effect when they washed up on the non-Anglo shores of the hemisphere.
I hope that as a long term survival strategy for the Irish we integrate with the Hispanics and gain power that way.
By "integrate with Hispanics" I assume you mean, that, after the country is wrecked (er, "de-WASPed"), you'll join the upper-caste white "Hispanic" caste lording it over the less- or not-white "Hispanic" caste. That has worked out very nicely for some Irishmen, so best of luck to you.
"Svigor said...
It is solely the function of Anglo racism.
Micks are generally a bunch of racists. Leftoid-racist, and against "Anglos," but racist."
Racism is not a bad thing per se. It's bad when it happens to us.
"Anonymous said...
"I hope that as a long term survival strategy for the Irish we integrate with the Hispanics and gain power that way."
Ah, the Irish! Good thing I got some Irish in me, whenever I snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, I know what to blame! Dude (I hear that's an Irish word, probably at one time "illegal", is that cool or what?), like we really hear a lot about those Irish in the US Army that deserted to fight for Mexico in the Mexican-American war, what did they call that, the Saint Patrick's Battalion? And how about those 25,000 Irish who intended to invade Canada, they ended up calling that the Fenian raids, it's sure disappeared down the old memory hole.
A little math suggests that you integrate with the Hispanics in the western hemisphere (do you get the potential size of that population?) and you are going to be as genetically forgotten, disappeared in no time, as obscure a footnote as those Fenians or the Batallón de San Patricio. Erin go bragh!
7/15/12 7:03 PM"
Grow up sweetheart. You are either screwing or being screwed. Poor whites, many of whom are Irish, have nothing to gain from socially or politically allying with wealthier whites. Wealthy white American society is responsible for that and a consequence may well be that poor whites come to take on a more hispanic identity. The best thing that could happen to the bottom 100 million US whites would be a reformation of their identity as one opposed to WASPs and conservatism. Out of a larder of terrible options this is the best group survival strategy for poor whites in America.
The theory behind the dusty old concept of noblesse oblige is that a powerful class that thinks of itself as being in the game for the very long run will tend to behave in a more responsible fashion than one that doesn't.
Right -- it's the difference between vertical transmission and horizontal transmission. The only way for the Jewish and European-derived peoples to co-exist peacefully is for Jews to be transformed into the societal equivalent of mitochondria.
Well-said, the Jew Elite is about doing what's fair and right for all of mankind, not just privileged Americans.
Taking from the productive and giving to the non-productive amounts to slavery. It's never right, and it's never fair.
And it's always misanthropic, as it necessarily reduces the size of the human pie.
Similarly, the WASP Robber Barons screwed over their workers (paying them in company scrip sometimes, hiring goons to beat them up when they tried to form unions, etc.), but endowed lavish libraries and museums. In both cases, there's a lack of empathy for average American workers, but a noblesse oblige to community institutions.
The robber barons were not the Anglo-Saxon elite, though you might argue that they were a tiny part of it. Ultimately, the Anglo-Saxon elite defeated the robber barons and restricted immigration in 1924. Steve is suggesting that the Jewish elite do something similar and curb their co-ethnics' anti-social conduct.
Sailer misreads Jews. Jews go from the tribal to the Universal without stopping at Nationalism. This is why Jews obsessively support immigration. It may hurt gentile Americans a little but it REALLY benefits some immigrant from the 3rd World. That's why Jews already think they're practicing noblise oblige - but its to the world just to the USA.
Israel's immigration policy refutes your silly contention.
Partially agree, but Jews have also correctly analyzed that some of the high-minded noblesse oblige of the WASP elite is self-serving, self-interest. It was in the interest of WASP elites for decades for example to lock Jews out of certain high ranked educational institutions (using a variety of subtle mechanisms) so that their lesser skilled sons and daughters could get slots rather than better JEws.
Constituting 20% of the class is hardly a case of being locked out! And you're missing an important point -- noblesse oblige is ALWAYS self-serving and self-interested.
It's just that the self whose interest is being served is not the personal self -- it's the communal self.
Equally dubious. JEws have been in the forefront of numerous ANTI-RELIGIOUS, ANTI-THEOCRATIC movements. A JEw like Karl Marx did not give a damn about Judaism.
Good Lord, man, does it not occur to you that those movements may have been attacking COMPETING theocracies?
The robber barons were not the Anglo-Saxon elite, though you might argue that they were a tiny part of it. Ultimately, the Anglo-Saxon elite defeated the robber barons and restricted immigration in 1924.
By the time of the robber barons, much of the WASP elite had already made their money and established themselves through the Old China Trade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_China_Trade and other ventures. There was some overlap with the robber barons, but the robber barons tended to be upstarts and nouveau riche. Many robber barons of course bought themselves into the WASP elite. There was some conflict between them, with the old WASP elite being more conservative and reactionary and wanting to preserve their position and the general character of American society, and the robber barons tending to be more aggressive and business oriented. This is reflected in things like the immigration issue which the WASP elite won in 1924.
Right, you had quite a lot of ideological diversity within the old WASP elite: Robber Barons v. Progressives, that kind of thing. Mencius Moldbug thinks reformist WASPs were terrible, but I see a useful creative tension. I like industrialization and I like conservation, too.
@StageIrishTroll: Wealthy white American society is responsible for that and a consequence may well be that poor whites come to take on a more hispanic identity. The best thing that could happen to the bottom 100 million US whites would be a reformation of their identity as one opposed to WASPs and conservatism.
Hahahahaha. In case you haven't noticed, Paddy, "wealthy whites" are very, very, very happy about the "hispanicization" of America's lower orders. The less the peons identify with the irritatingly uppity Old American ethos of the free-born Englishman, the better they like it. You seem to be laboring under the bizarre misapprehension that "wealthy whites" are at a disadvantage in "Hispanic" political cultures.
Out of a larder of terrible options this is the best group survival strategy for poor whites in America.
Great strategy. I'm told that the genius Irish PTBs and their IRA retread cronies are really sticking it to the English by importing planeload after planeload of Third Worlders into Eire, too.
(Weren't you playing Aggrieved Southern Euro Anonymous in a couple of previous threads? You sound a lot like "Yan Shen", too. Or is it just that aspirants for the crown of MOPE in America all sound alike?)
This is why Jews obsessively support immigration. It may hurt gentile Americans a little but it REALLY benefits some immigrant from the 3rd World. That's why Jews already think they're practicing noblise oblige - but its to the world just to the USA.
It's not noblesse oblige if the oblige is taken out of the other guy's hide.
(But I grant my French is rusty. Maybe the use of "obliger" here carries the contemporary nuance of "votre douleur, mon profit".)
"Rohan Swee said...
@StageIrishTroll: Wealthy white American society is responsible for that and a consequence may well be that poor whites come to take on a more hispanic identity. The best thing that could happen to the bottom 100 million US whites would be a reformation of their identity as one opposed to WASPs and conservatism.
Hahahahaha. In case you haven't noticed, Paddy, "wealthy whites" are very, very, very happy about the "hispanicization" of America's lower orders. The less the peons identify with the irritatingly uppity Old American ethos of the free-born Englishman, the better they like it. You seem to be laboring under the bizarre misapprehension that "wealthy whites" are at a disadvantage in "Hispanic" political cultures.
Out of a larder of terrible options this is the best group survival strategy for poor whites in America.
Great strategy. I'm told that the genius Irish PTBs and their IRA retread cronies are really sticking it to the English by importing planeload after planeload of Third Worlders into Eire, too."
The only way I can conceive capitalism and the capitalist class will cede power in America is through the emergence of a Chavez type figure from amongst the people of colour. While such a figure would be anti-capitalist he would also be anti-white. So on a personal basis the best hope for whites is to subsume themselves into the rising tide of colour. If I had an kid and were an American I'd advise him to marry an intelligent black woman. There is no future for the non-wealthy white population of America. The wealthy might might pushing the Brazilianisation of America but with luck they are building the scaffold from which they will be hanged.
As for your Irish jibe. Sunshine, read the paper, we're all Europeans now. Whether we like it or not. Me I don't, If it were possible to be pro-white and socialist that would be great but it isn't and one cannot be pro-white and capitalist because capitalism is anti-human, so we have to be practical.
You should think of being white as having money in a bank that's bust and is subject to a run. You'd better join the run before you're out of luck.
"Good Lord, man, does it not occur to you that those movements may have been attacking COMPETING theocracies?"
Perhaps, but Marx was quite vehement in his contempt for Judaism;indeed, one gets the impression that, while despising all religions, Marx was more sympathetic to Christianity.
"That's what makes it all so -- frustrating. I know Jews whose near relatives were murdered/raped/robbed, etc., by blacks, and still they persist in their delusions, at least on the outside. But I do think there is some iota of self-preservation that is the germ of realizing the truth."
It's things like this that make me think that the widespread PC religion will be over sooner than a lot of people think. It's a popular delusion on the scale of the Dutch tulip mania, and like tulip mania it is also unsustainable.
Like most of these popular delusions, it appears to the average person that this situation will last forever; they can't see the end of it. Remember the US and UK real estate bubbles at their height? Can't grow wrong in property? Or the Dot Com bubble? You talk to people today, and not many will admit to being suckered hook line and sinker at the time, but they were.
This herding behavior of the vast majority of humanity is annoyingly frustrating for the true independent thinkers amongst us. Even otherwise intelligent people, when confronted with everyone else in the same room bleating out obvious but identical bullshit, will bleat out the same bullshit unless they have whatever spark it is that enables someone to think independently.
However, it is that same herding mentality that also enables us to do things like defend our homes and win wars, so we should not be too disparaging.
Nevertheless, a healthy society always has a few contrarians, a few independent thinkers willing to tell the emperor he is wearing no clothes. When the unsaid is finally said, eventually the unthought starts being thought again. A Steve Sailer gets his own commentariat and mainstream readers, and they will be influential. It's how revolutions always start - a few intelligent individuals write, draw converts, and only decades later is the mainstream converted.
There was a part in "Bobos In Paradise" where he paused over the salient c.v. difference between 1960s' elites and today's; namely, the former group's universal military service
The old Atlantic Monthly/"Main Line" honor code was considered an obstacle to various burgeoning segments of the populace after Vietnam, was also resented by Dixiecrats for obvious reasons, and was old & rickety enough to provide an easy target for academics and journalists to go poking holes. Therefore the entire thing had to be junked summarily; now we spend the days scratching our heads about why the new streamlined elite acts in a consistently honor-free fashion
irishman:
The best thing that could happen to the bottom 100 million US whites would be a reformation of their identity as one opposed to WASPs and conservatism. Out of a larder of terrible options this is the best group survival strategy for poor whites in America.
You mean they will be annihilated forever. But, if they were just going to be recalcitrant unspectacular trash, I guess it's for the better.
" Difference Maker said...
irishman:
Being leftist is a perfectly good position for Irish-Americans. America treated us like trash so we acted like trash.
Is that so? We would not want for the irish to get the causality backwards.
As you say, the WASPs had no reason to help you. Perhaps they were fixated on the unspectacular part. You are lucky America was around so that you weren't stuck with the English
7/17/12 1:26 AM"
I disagree but it makes no material difference.
"Difference Maker said...
irishman:
The best thing that could happen to the bottom 100 million US whites would be a reformation of their identity as one opposed to WASPs and conservatism. Out of a larder of terrible options this is the best group survival strategy for poor whites in America.
You mean they will be annihilated forever. But, if they were just going to be recalcitrant unspectacular trash, I guess it's for the better.
7/17/12 1:32 AM"
The whites who integrate with the rising tide of colour will likely become the governing class of the future. Those who don't will go the way of the Afrikaners. Like I said, Screw or be screwed.
"I think both Hayes and Brooks are right. Meritocracy has, to a small extent, allowed elites to emerge and consolidate their positions of power, sans the moral imperative of the generations past. Yet meritocracy certainly shouldn’t be blamed for other corrupting influences like unlimited campaign contributions."
http://www.cpreview.org/2012/07/the-meritocratic-ideal/
The Jews could always return to Poland from whence they left in search of riches. There was never any persecution of Jews in Poland. Of course the Russians had their pogroms - in the name of Holy Orthodoxy they murdered Catholic and Jew alike. The uniting factor of all the pogroms were always in regions with an Orthodox or Russian presence. The Soviet occupational force were the ones who murdered the Jews in Kielce, 1946 not the Poles.
(I find it funny that there are Orthodox monarchists in the USA - I just wonder when they will start killing Catholics, Jews and Protestants in the name of Holy Orthodoxy and when the blessing of the knives will commence in America. Although the conservative Catholic people in the USA who believe in the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire and worship the Hapsburg are a similar bunch of nutcases. )
Americans have a hatred for Hitler greater than the Poles and are more hateful of the Jews than we are. I've lived in both countries and I can compare.
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