In Defense of Elitism
By now, we've all heard the latest negative spin on Barack Obama: he's elitist. He's an out-of-touch, pointy-headed intellectual who thinks he knows better than Joe and Jane Average. He dares to suggest that the most popular policies are not necessarily the best ones.
My question: since when is this a bad thing? In many cases, he probably *does* know better than Joe and Jane Average (when it comes to questions of policy, anyway). Knowing better than Joe and Jane Average is his *job*. He knows how the political machinery works, and he has a staff to brief him on important background info which most people don't have at their disposal...and, yes, he's probably a little smarter than the average person. Not all opinions are equally valid. Not all ideas are good ones. Joe and Jane Average are entitled to have their ideas heard, but they're not entitled to be taken seriously if their ideas are stupid.
A huge number of the problems this country is facing are partly due to the devaluation of expertise. If someone other than an Arabian horse judge had been appointed to head FEMA, the response to Katrina might have been handled a hell of a lot better. If Rumsfeld had listened to the seasoned military commanders who told him he couldn't 'liberate' Iraq with a few Humvees and the Power of Democracy, we might not be quite so deep into a quagmire over there. If people had taken warnings of resource depletion seriously and embraced conservation, our economy wouldn't be so badly shaken by surging oil prices. And yes, if people would come to grips with the fact that the earth is not 6000 years old, and that morality is not as simple as "God said it, I believe it, end of story," maybe they'd start worrying about problems and injustices that actually matter, rather than voting for a corrupt and incompetent regime just because that regime opposes gay marriage.
My question: since when is this a bad thing? In many cases, he probably *does* know better than Joe and Jane Average (when it comes to questions of policy, anyway). Knowing better than Joe and Jane Average is his *job*. He knows how the political machinery works, and he has a staff to brief him on important background info which most people don't have at their disposal...and, yes, he's probably a little smarter than the average person. Not all opinions are equally valid. Not all ideas are good ones. Joe and Jane Average are entitled to have their ideas heard, but they're not entitled to be taken seriously if their ideas are stupid.
A huge number of the problems this country is facing are partly due to the devaluation of expertise. If someone other than an Arabian horse judge had been appointed to head FEMA, the response to Katrina might have been handled a hell of a lot better. If Rumsfeld had listened to the seasoned military commanders who told him he couldn't 'liberate' Iraq with a few Humvees and the Power of Democracy, we might not be quite so deep into a quagmire over there. If people had taken warnings of resource depletion seriously and embraced conservation, our economy wouldn't be so badly shaken by surging oil prices. And yes, if people would come to grips with the fact that the earth is not 6000 years old, and that morality is not as simple as "God said it, I believe it, end of story," maybe they'd start worrying about problems and injustices that actually matter, rather than voting for a corrupt and incompetent regime just because that regime opposes gay marriage.