Three Cheers for the Elite

I hesitate to add to the lake of ink which continues to be spilled over the recent American election - people either gleefully spiking the football or angrily pointing fingers at the coach.

I’m not going to suggest what went wrong or what went right, but instead, I’m reacting to the catchall pejorative which was hurled both before and after the campaign, mostly at Democrats.

Elitist.

As one opinion writer wrongly framed the election, it was the elites versus the people. And yes, the elites lost.

Who are these elites anyway? And why must they be defeated?

I don’t believe the invective of ‘elitist’ is simply the wrath of those who have less towards those who have more. Not rural America versus Hollywood. I see it more as the rampant scorn towards differences in society fuelled by social media where everyone has a bullhorn and access to the rants and raves of, well, everyone else.

The quest for equal opportunity is vital to a moral society. Slavery is considered anathema. Gender equality is sought. The diversity of a society is reflected in opportunities to govern and learn. Lofty goals, for sure.

But a mis-guided egalitarianism scorns achievement leaving those who rise by virtue of their diligence and industry considered repugnant.

Sadly, we have lost the esteem for accomplishment. The respect for leadership. The upholding of standards. Anti-intellectual populism has run amok. Some ideas really ARE better than others. Some athletes are better than others. Not all opinions have equal cerebral weight. Historians have studied history. Scientists have studied science. Economists have studied the economy. Athletes have sacrificed and worked hard to hone their skills.

We are all equal but some folks are more qualified to offer opinion or advice in certain fields. Some athletes excel enough to win and deserve accolades. Some have honed their vocational skills and even sharpened their reasoning based on access to new information.

For my money, the most glaring example of the anti-elitist inchoate rage was the treatment of Dr. Antony Fauci. He spent his career fighting disease, but when Covid hit, a segment of society who had been primed to distrust authority, wanted him imprisoned for mandating vaccinations. People read something from someone somewhere on the Internet and decided that their expertise on immunology trumped that of Dr. Fauci.

In Barak Obama’s memoir, A Promised Land, he writes, “…if you wanted good government, then expertise mattered. You needed public institutions stocked with people whose job is was to pay attention to important stuff so the rest of us citizens didn’t have to. And it was thanks to those experts that Americans could worry less about the quality of the air we breathed or the water we drank … that we could count on over-the-counter drugs not killing us, and safer today than it had been just twenty or thirty or fifty years agol” (p. 496)

It is a curse of our times that we debunk true heroes and celebrate ourselves instead … that self-fulfillment is more important than achievement, that everyone has to get a medal so no one feels that they lost.

But back to the recent election. Democracy depends on an informed electorate but not an electorate who vote based on their resentment and rage towards those who have achieved through rigorous education and long labour.

People have different gifts and abilities. To say that is not to diminish their humanity or give up fighting for equal opportunities But it is unwise and unfair to consider those  who have achieved to be  suspect, simply because they have achieved.