Angelo M Codevilla wrote an article for conservative publication aimed at explaining why those in power of both political parties will not take the American people's objections to buying toxic assets, bailouts, stimulus bills, government expansion disguised as "health care reform", signing bills without reading them and bipartisan backroom deals seriously. Our politicians think, look, and act as a class. They began to be called the Ruling Class. The article was expanded to include the differences of the Ruling Class and the Country Class.
Excerpts from
The Ruling Class:
"We believe in merit. We rise or fall based on merit. This is not true for the Ruling Class. In fact, for them, merit is looked down upon."
"They have certain strange beliefs. One of these is that the United States is the problem in the world. Another is that those of us not in the Ruling Class haven't got the smarts to know what's best for ourselves."
"These people are threatened by the private sector. They couldn't compete with the average successful person in the private sector."
"The Ruling Class has a fear. They know that they are a minority, and they know that their time is coming."
"Political clashes over individual issues are so bitter because each represents the attempt of the Ruling Class to lock down the controls already established on its subordinates, and what the subordinates feel may be their last chance of escape."
"best left to professionals...more and more of what ordinary people think of as private decisions that concern medical care, the use of energy and water, even the consumption of food, should occur within guidelines firmly set by experts like themselves."
"It confuses its own opinions with 'science'. Americans pray to the God who created us in His own image, our Ruling Class prays to themselves as saviors of the planet and shapers of mankind in their own image."
"The Ruling Class accepts no standard it cannot control."
"American people do not want partisan government. They want self-governance."
"...they realized that America's rulers had become a self-contained, self-referential class."
"Differences between the Bushes, Clintons and Obamas are of degree, not kind."
"The Republican Party did not disparage the Ruling Class, because most of its officials are or would like to be part of it."
"This means that Democratic politicians are the Ruling Class' prime legitimate representatives."
"Ruling Class is as hostile as it is incompetent has solidified."
"...while most Americans pray to the God 'who hath created and doth sustain us', our Ruling Class prays to itself as saviors of the planet and improvers of humanity."
"Today's Ruling Class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits."
"America's Ruling Class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats."
"...privileged people demographically is that, whether in government power directly or as officers in companies, their careers and fortunes depend on government. They vote Democrat more consistently..."
"...Ruling Class. Like a fraternity, this class requires, above all, comity-being in with the right people, giving the required signs that one is on the right side, and joining in despising the Outs."
"For our Ruling Class, identity always trumps truth."
"The top schools select for compatibility, not excellence."
"These schools have been national leaders in grade inflation. At Stanford, where the most common grade is an A..."
"...our Ruling Class recruits and renews itself not through meritocracy but rather by taking into itself people whose most prominent feature is their commitment to fit in."
"...our Ruling Class stunt itself through negative selection. Each succeeding generation is less competent than its predecessor."
"Its first tenet is that its members are the best and brightest, while the rest of Americans are retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly restrained. How did this replace the Founding Fathers' paradigm that "all men are created equal."
"...modern laws are primarily grants of discretion, all anybody hs to know about them is whom they empower. This defines 'crony capitalism."
"Our Ruling Class' economics aim not at making us wealthier, but at making us more dependent."
"The US labor movement now consists almost exclusively of government employees, employees of companies doing government contracts, or companies that are subsidized by government...they trade political contributions and votes for guaranteed contracts."
"Disregard for the text of laws, for the dictionary definitions of words and the intentions of those who wrote them, in favor of the decider's discretion has permeated out Ruling Class from the Supreme Court to the lowest local agency."
"...the power to decide when words mean what they say and when they do not is the power to do so whenever one wants, for whatever purpose."
"If government can decide that the constitution contains things that it does not, and allows things that it forbids, then adieu to the rule of law."
"...'families', meaning mostly households based on something other than marriage...husbands are held financially responsible for the children they father, while out-of-wedlock fathers are not...forces those couples who raise their own children to subsidize childcare for those who do not."
"Since unmarried mothers often are or expect to be clients of government services, it is not surprising that they are among the Democratic Party's most faithful voters."
"...school nurses who could not administer an aspirin to a child without the parent's consent, the people who run America's schools nowadays administer pregnancy test and ship girls off to abortion clinics without the parent's knowledge."
"Consensus among the right people is the only standard of truth."
"...shares above all the desire to be rid of rulers it regards as inept and haughty."
"The Country Class is not anti-government, just nongovernmental...as the result of countless private choices rather than as the consequence of someone else's master plan."
"The Country Class knows the government is there to serve the strong: the Ruling Class' members and supporters."
"The former wants the company to grow by producing a better product at a lower cost. The latter wants it to grow by moving it as close to the feeding trough as possible."
"Members of the Country Class who want to rise in their professions through competence alone try at once to avoid the Ruling Class' rituals while guarding against infringing its prejudices."
"Persons who were brought up to believe themselves worthy as anyone, who manage their own lives to their own satisfaction, naturally resent politicians of both parties who say that the issues of modern life are too complex for anyone but themselves."
"Since when and by what right does intelligence trump human equality? Moreover, if the politicians are so smart, why have they made life worse?"
"Ruling Class and its underclass clients..."
"One out of seven sets of parents has already abandoned the public schools, and many more wish they could."
"Millions of parents recognize the Ruling Class' idea of education is different from theirs."
"Utah gets 2.1 SAT points per dollar, while the District of Columbia, which spends three times as much as Utah, gets only .07."
"The result is that SAT scores for home-schoolers hover around the eightieth percentile. How did those dumb, violent racists achieve results like that?"
"...attack the premise of the laws than the bureaucracy."
"Seldom does a Democratic official or member of the Ruling Class speak on public affairs without reiterating the litany of his class' claim to authority, contrasting it with opponents who are either uninformed, stupid, racist, shills for business, violent, fundamentalist, or all of the above."
"...re-training rulers grown accustomed to treating their own desires as laws."
"Reducing agencies' budgets is unserious. If a job should be done and the agency is doing it, why cut? But if it is not, why not abolish it?"
"South of zero" refers to the middle of the world, where Ecuador exists. It is also the name of a blog that is a gateway to Xpadorians living and retiring abroad. Each morning, Mary Beckman, aka Posterdog, compiles the latest posts of Ecuador expats and wannabes with charming introductions. It is one of the first sites I check in the morning.
