America's New Ruling Class

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that my greatest concern is the Federalization and corresponding 'felonization' of more and more of American life.  I believe the Federal ability to print money along with the transformation of a minimalist Federal government into a maximalist administrative state have done enormous damage to our Federal Republic and are the key reason why the country is bankrupt and adrift.

But one could argue that the result is democratic - if the people want the Federal government to do all these things then who am I to object?  Of course the people are sovereign only so long as the Constitution functions.  And according to the Founders, the keys to the functioning of the constitution was Federalism, the separation of powers and the tendency of ambition to check ambition.

But Federalism is gone.  One third of the typical state's spending (up to half for some) is now provided by the Feds and over two thirds is governed by them.  Education, healthcare, transportation, and social welfare policies are effectively dictated at the center upon pain of loss of funding.  Federalism for most things other than legalized Marijuana is dead and getting colder by the minute.

What about the separation of powers?  The rise of the administrative state has resulted in a defacto replacement of rule by elected magistrates with rule by unelected bureaucrats.  The Federal structure was designed to be a minimal, slow moving government, to the extent that a prescriptive administrative state could have even been conceived, it was intended to be delivered by the states.  The result of jury rigging the latter to the former has been an incredibly expensive and ineffective kluge where the legislative and executive often gridlock themselves and each other.  This has allowed the bureaucracy to do what it wants subject to the approval of the unelected judiciary making much of the government practically independent from its elected 'masters'.  And rule by bureaucrat has increasingly moved from defacto to dejure.  With the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection and the Independent Payment Advisory Boards (CFPB and IPAB) Democrats have created powerful agencies able to ban any service or company in their ambit.  Under law these agencies are not subject to Congressional oversight, cannot be abolished and get their funding independent of the budget.  So much for separation of powers.

Relying on ambition to check ambition to protect our interests is looking increasingly grim as well.  Look at the summary of who controls the 'commanding heights' of our government below.  I could create a much more detailed list that includes key business leaders and the media but it wouldn't really change the picture much.  After WWII elite colleges, principally the Ivies and a few others like Chicago and Stanford began deliberately skimming the 'richest' intellects in the nation and world.  These intellects came to the institutions, intermarried and are now sending their children to them.

Most nations have ruling classes that are close knit, go to he same educational institutions and intermarry.  The English have Oxbridge, the French have the Haute Ecoles and so on.  The genius of the United States has been that the process of immigration and the fragmentation into 50 sovereign states broke up the ruling classes and let many new people rise to the top.  But through the elimination of Federalism, the expansion and centralization of most state wealth and power into a single unitary state and the focused efforts of rich universities, this democratic process has been reversed.

Because as Murray and Herrnstein in the Bell Curve pointed out, intelligence is partially heritable, the actions of the elite universities serve to concentrate and distill a 'cognitive elite' that is through breeding, socialization and the advantages of immensely expensive tax subsidized educations are increasingly able to seize more and more of the commanding heights of our society.

And increasingly this process is deliberate and hereditary.  A naive elite screening process would result in the most talented regardless of their race or ethnicity being admitted into the 'golden circle'.  However as Ron Unz recently demonstrated in his brilliant The Myth of American Meritocracy, elite universities deliberately penalize talent that is not currently part of the power elite (Asians) and aggressively promote less talented cohorts that are descended from the current power elites (Jews).


This results in elites across the ideological spectrum that have more in common with each other than with their ideological allies out in the provinces.  Look how this works in practice.  Take for example the recent surprise ruling by Chief Justice John Roberts (JD, Harvard) on the Affordable Care Act.  Justice Roberts essentially corrected Congresses' homework and then gave it an 'A' for the corrected version.  He did so according to the pundits because by not ruling on the law (as opposed to his revised version of the law) he was protecting the 'credibility' of the Supreme Court.  One might ask from who?  Certainly not the majority of the population that was opposed to the ACA, nor the majority of states who had sued to stop it.  No, Justice Roberts concern was with his credibility among his peers in Washington.  His peers from Harvard, Yale, Princeton.


So every time a lefty votes for a new Federal program like health care reform than runs roughshod over the states and every time a teabagger votes for more national 'security' like Homeland Security  or intensifies the "Drug War" they hand more levers of power to this small and increasingly concentrated power elite.

And I don't think recreating the inbred, self interested anti-democratic power elites of Georgian England was what the founders had in mind.  Do you?

SURVEY OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROVENANCE OF OUR POWER ELITES - Past and Present

Postwar Presidential elections to Reagan: 
'48 High School beats Columbia

'52 USMA beats Northwestern

'56 USMA beats Northwestern

'60 Harvard beats Duke

'64 Southwest Texas beats High School

'68 Duke beats LSU

'72 Duke beats Dakota Wesleyan

'76 USNA beats Michigan, 

'80 Eureka beats USNA

'84 Eureka beats Minnesota.

Presidential  elections since Reagan: 
'88 Yale beats Harvard

'92 Yale beats Yale

'96 Yale beats Kansas

'00 Yale beats Harvard

'04 Yale beats Harvard

'08 Harvard beats Naval Acadamy

'12 Harvard beats Harvard.

Goldman Sachs
Early Goldman Sachs:  Jewish wise guys without college educations or CCNY.
Goldman Sachs now:  Top Harvard, Yale, Princeton graduates with the modern equivalent of ‘sand’

Fed
Paul Volker Harvard
Alan Greenspan NYU
Ben Bernanke Harvard

Supreme Court 1970
2 Harvard
2 Yale
1 Columbia
1 William Mitchell
1 Alabama
1 Howard
1 Northwestern

Supreme Court 2012
5 Harvard
1 Columbia (but attended Harvard)
3 Yale