Intoning darkly about the "intellectual elite" is (was) done to cast a pall on Obama's intelligence or academic achievement in an attempt to distract the "average voter" from the current administration's folksy "by the rich and for the rich" elitism for the past 8 years. During the GOP convention, the tactic was somewhat effective in causing a shadowy contrast in the "frighteningly inexperienced or crazy fresh?" showdown of Obama vs. Palin. He's an "elitist" Harvard trained community organizer/professor of constitutional law/legislator/senator, and she's a new home- grown governor of a little ol' state with only a bachelors in journalism, but a lotta gumption and lipstick.
My first reaction was, "Don't I want the smartest, best people I can vote for in charge?" (Actually my real first reaction is to mentally scream "I HATE EVERYBODY!" but that is just campaign fatigue.) However, I also knew what they were implying.
The phrase, "intellectual elite" conjures up the image of the narrow-minded, effete academic, sneering at "common people" from their ivy covered colleges and warping the minds of youth with their uber-liberal, doubletalking, groupthinking ways. American colleges are very bad about producing insular little worlds where conforming to what your professor/peers/faculty head want gets in the way of original thinking or innovation. Academics who conform might have been brilliant, average or weak minded, and often waste their talents being vicious, backbiting infighters in their own narrow fields, expounding theories with no use in the real world. (For a wonderful article/book review on intellectual elitism of this sort by one of my favorite authors, take a look here. (He's conservative, but he is brilliant and I love his writing and analysis even when we don't agree.))
But to the founding fathers, an intellectual elite meant something quite different. Thomas Jefferson wished for the best people of all economic backgrounds to be a part of the leadership of the nation but constitutionally held responsible and accountable by the Constitution and a government for and by the people.
Thomas Jefferson has been called an elitist, and in a sense he certainly was. He believed that government should be run by a trained elite, that young people who possess outstanding talent should be selected from all classes, poor as well as rich, and that those young people should receive the highest levels of education possible to enable them to serve in positions of responsibility.
"By... [selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Va., 1782.
His chief concern was with the talented poor, since the talented rich have means at their disposal to develop their talents on their own. But whatever their origin, his elite was based on virtue and talent, not merely on wealth and birth.
"Instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society and scattered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821.
It is this elite of virtue and talent, wherever found, that should be nurtured and chosen to run the government. But in no case was confidence to be placed in even this aristocracy of virtue and talent so as to give them unlimited powers to run the government as they pleased. No elitist group was to be trusted to that extent. The fundamental structure of government was controlled by a Constitution which bound this elite of virtue and talent to certain principles.
"It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights. Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power. Our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft, Kentucky Res., 1798.
You can get the full article that this came from here.
Which side seems to be more in line with what Jefferson and the founding fathers had in mind? Is this not still an excellent ideal to get back to for our country? Exactly when did touting one's mediocrity become a campaign ploy anyway?
I know I would like to see a change in dynamic from the past 8 years of government fronted by a good ol' boy and run by elitists of the very worst sort with little regard for anyone but the very rich.
It's not intellectually elitist to want the very best we can get for our country. It's just plain old smart.
Addendum: Someone writing for Newsweek was thinking in the same vein/.
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