James Bartholomew writes in the Spectator UK, it is their education
Responding to his post becomes a little tricky because who a liberal elite changes with whom you ask. For the purposes of this discussion, this definition
is a pejorative term used to describe people who are politically left of centre, whose education had traditionally opened the doors to affluence and power and form a managerial elite.
will suffice.
For James, the world has only two groups; the liberal elite and ordinary people. I don’t know where most of you are,ordinary people or elite, but we will let him talk to us.
To James, the liberal elite consider ordinary people a disappointment. And because of this, he offers to give us a pathology of this eliteness. He wonders, if they are educated, why are they so silly? And the answer, you guessed it, he says is their education. Let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth
Ah! There is a clue. That word ‘educated’. What does ‘educated’ mean today? It doesn’t mean they know a lot about the world. It means they have been injected with the views and assumptions of their teachers. They have been taught by people who themselves have little experience of the real world. They have been indoctrinated with certain ideas.
and what are these ideas?
They have been taught that capitalism is inherently bad.
They have been led to believe is that governments make things better.
Environment-alism and recycling are taught as doctrine, rather than as subjects for discussion.
This next one is special,
One of the most important things schools and universities teach is that the students must never, under any circumstances, be suspected of racism.
James tells us also that a central tenet of this education
is the dogma that women have been oppressed, are oppressed and, for the future, there is no limit to what we must do to ensure they get to be in the same situation as men — having as many directorships and military medals and anything else one can think of.
Given the above, I don’t know who is to blame here, is it the élite, the ordinary people or James? I believe James is wrong on many fronts.
If he is right on the claim that the liberal élite are in managerial positions, it would be a contradiction for him to claim they believe capitalism is inherently bad while at the same time they are beneficiaries of it. And while at it, is James not saying here, then, that, the ordinary people have been brainwashed capitalism is inherently good even if they are daily screwed by it.
Those people who are opposed to government saying nothing of the military and prison systems which provide employment for the most number of people in almost all countries. Their problem seems only to be with government when it interferes in education or when it fails to ensure they have emergency services. I propose they choose a struggle, either they want government or they don’t.
Any rational person will admit that pollution has deleterious effect on our lives. Look at cities in China where smog interferes with visibility sometimes for days. Or the case of polluting our water bodies. And if the elite are the educated lot, I would believe, ordinary people see the effects of environmental degradation that they take measures to check it. Maybe James should tell us what his problem really is with regard to environmental consciousness.
I must confess at this point that I can’t comment on what is taught in your universities on racism. I am surprised there is an edict against it when for a long time, the white world has been racist in its relationship to others. I mean, Kant, Hegel, Hume and most of those greats provided the foundation material for slavery and colonialism.
His next beef on women is very interesting. Is he denying that women have faced structural challenges in society in their fight for equality and equity? Are there no barriers to their progress? That in most countries, even women reproductive health issues are the preserve of men? Whatever his beef is, I can’t tell at the moment.
Do ordinary people go to school? If you read James, the answer to this is almost no. How, for example, does one make sense of this
If a member of the elite, for example, finds him or herself reflecting that it is usually quite difficult to interest little girls in train sets and guns, they must squash that thought.
Is it really the case that if we made train sets and guns available to the girls, they would not like them? But anyway, who thinks guns are good plaything for kids?
Whilst Brexit and Trump are issues far removed from daily life, I don’t think what James calls the liberal elite is one homogeneous group that voted the same way in both UK and the US of A. Maybe a majority did, but at the moment I have no way of finding out.
It is my contention that he has not, in his attempt to disparage the liberal elites, demonstrated what the problem is with them. The few issues he has raised with their education, are in my view not the purview of a small elite but are matters of continuous debate in the spaces we inhabit.
Finally, when in his final paragraph he writes
They are virtuous. They know best. They are the chosen ones. They have only a token belief in democracy. They expect and intend to prevail.
is he doing this is the spokesperson of the ordinary people? Is the judgement the ordinary people have placed on the ‘others’ or is this James’ own views? Does this mean, on the contrary, that the ordinary people feel themselves virtuous, all knowing, the only chosen ones and they should prevail? I would assume the ordinary people are the majority and so I am unable to see how James thinks the small elite would trample on their wishes? unless he also implies this same elite controls political power too, which I don’t think is the case.
Or maybe, this is a first world problem and entirely don’t understand James for which case, I sincerely apologize.
Random thoughts 