Commentary
The governing philosophical principle of the past 100 years—top-down control by credentialled elites—is under strain as never before. The evidence is all around us. You see it in the polls showing supermajorities affirm the idea that government is, by and large, corrupt. The status of academia as an institution is in meltdown. People no longer trust the media. Even science is greeted with incredulity.
It’s the age of the loss of trust. Everyone is saying that, but what does it really mean? To understand what that means, we have to understand what we used to trust and why we no longer do. What paradigm are we leaving, and what is the new paradigm that needs to replace it?
To grapple honestly with these questions, let’s look beyond the superficial slogans of left and right, liberal and conservative, and partisan divisions. The real issue is far more foundational. It speaks to the prevailing intellectual paradigm of the past 100 years. It traces to an essential conviction that the system of intellectual hierarchy, as it was constructed since the early 20th century, works.
This is the core idea that has controlled the commanding heights for a century in the United States. The best schools lead to the best jobs. These jobs give the best of the best access to the social circles of others who have been similarly vetted and made it through the thicket to gain admission to elite circles. There are professional societies and private clubs to separate such people from the rabble and reward them for their service.
These circles all believe that the elites deserve their station because they are the most learned, most experienced, most wise, most far-seeing, and the group best suited to protect order and rule. They are essentially the royals sitting atop a democratic rabble. These people make up the intellectual infrastructure in every single field, from government to academia to media to corporate governance.
This ideology is not a bias. This is a dogmatic system of belief that the best of the best should rule all things. It’s the core belief, all they have. It gives them purpose, meaning, security, and a haughty conviction that they know what’s what and can preach to others. And keep this in mind: This belief system is sincere, not fake. It comes from dogmatic doctrine, not often stated but firmly believed.
You can put whatever name on this system that you want: socialism, fascism, social democracy, technocracy, the planning state, and so on. These are all flavors of the same thing, and they all trace to the same idea. That idea is that some people—by virtue of class identity, educational credentialing, social-club membership, attachment to science as the path of truth, or just going through the prescribed paces as a life path—deserve the power, resources, and position to rule over others.
This belief in the intellectual meritocracy as a ruling class traces to the Progressive Era. The first U.S. president to embody it was the Princeton University professor turned ruler Woodrow Wilson. He spelled it out in all his writings. He rejected the U.S. Constitution as primitive cant. He wanted an elite class to rule based on technocratic wisdom and social-class membership. The presidency, he believed, should serve as the top of the hierarchy, and everything else should follow from that.
Every industry, from medicine to media, should be governed according to this principle of class identity rooted in intellectual achievement. The universities were to serve as the training ground. The government agencies should be inhabited by the expert class, not subject to the will of the voters but appointed for life. It was this conviction in the blessings of power and hierarchy that led him to enter World War I with confidence of winning and then to redraw the map of Europe from his dining room while working with a high-minded cabal of advisers.
In the American context, this belief in intellectual hierarchy takes on a regional caste. Of course it would be New England—not the South, not the flyover states, not Texas, and only sometimes the far West—that would emerge as the center power. Here was the home of the old-guard clubs, the Ivy League, the preparatory schools of long tradition, the professional societies that served as guardians of a series of cartels, the social networks, and the multigenerational wealth to back the entire system.
Many generations have been born into this system and socialized according to its tenets. The schools taught. The very idea of professional ambition meant to climb this ladder, not in hopes of commercial success but in hopes of permanent membership in one or another professional cartel. It could be in finance, technology, media, government, the nongovernmental organization sector, or academia itself. Regardless, gaining membership meant being given the right to rule.
Nothing about this ideology fits with the traditional idea of freedom as it emerged from the Enlightenment. This notion is best summed up with the sentence from the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and that all are endowed with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But Thomas Jefferson was a dreamer, while the architects of the emergent technocracy held a different view entirely.
A central figure here is Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825). He was the high priest of technocracy, a cause he pushed with missionary zeal. Born of aristocratic French lineage, he often claimed without evidence to be a descendant of Charlemagne (of course!). He was witness to the great event that defined his early and formative years, the French Revolution and the fall of the status of the monarchy.
He took from this wild experience the notion that monarchies were likely doomed with the ascendance of superior technical prowess backed by democratic forms of government, provided they were led by elites—such as himself. Science is not a process of discovery by research but a codified end state known and understood only by an elite. This elite would impose its view on everyone else.
Saint-Simon’s preferred system of government would consist of 21 men: “three mathematicians, three physicians, three chemists, three physiologists, three men of letters, three painters, three musicians.” He imagined that they would get along well, not be corrupt in the slightest, and would rule with overwhelming benevolence.
We would find out who these people are by having votes placed at the grave of Isaac Newton (Saint-Simon’s god of choice), and eventually, the consensus concerning the elite council would be chosen. They would not be a government as such, at least not as traditionally understood, but elite planners who would use intelligence to shape the whole society the same way that scientists understand and shape the natural world.
You see, to his way of thinking, this is far more rational than having a hereditary aristocracy in charge. And these men would, in turn, deploy their rationality in service of society, which would be enormously inspired by it.
“Men of genius will then enjoy a reward worthy of them and of you; this reward will place them in the only position which can provide them with the means of giving you all the services they’re capable of,” Saint-Simon said. “You will invest these leaders with immense consideration, and you will place a great pecuniary power at their disposition.”
So there you go: The elite get unlimited power and unlimited money, and everyone will aspire to act like these people, and this aspiration will improve the whole of society. Saint-Simon invited his followers to consider themselves “as the governors of the operation of the human mind.” He imagined “spiritual power in the hands of the savants; temporal power in the hands of the possessors; the power to nominate those called to fulfill the functions of the great heads of humanity, in the hands of everyone.”
He celebrated science but became the anti-Voltaire. Instead of freeing the human mind, he and his followers imagined themselves to be governors of it.
It was American Progressivism that institutionalized this vision in the United States.
A serious and early challenge to this dogma came in 1944 with F.A. Hayek’s book “The Road to Serfdom” and its best chapter, “Why the Worst Get on Top.” His thesis was that the entire system of intellectual hierarchy had backfired to become the exact opposite of its intentions. Instead of elevating the best, Hayek wrote, the system has done the opposite. It has created a playground for the abuse of power, the advancement of corruption, and the means by which society itself is gutted from within.
That thesis was anathema in 1944, but 80 years later, it turns out that Hayek was right. The social and economic ladder that so many generations have climbed has led to a system of rot, sickness, and dishonesty at the very top of every profession. Now you have an entire generation of people in high-end leadership positions who are desperately clamoring to hold on to their emoluments and privileges even as the popular revolt grows by the day.
This is why the diaries of Dr. Anthony Fauci have landed so hard and why the major media cannot talk about them. They reveal all: not the wise reflections of a paragon of science and medicine but rather a media-obsessed social climber handing out tax loot like a mob boss. It’s an unseemly presentation that pulls back the curtain more than any document of our time.
The battle over Trump—no counterrevolution is led by ideal—is about much more than one man and his presidency. The old guard elites decided 10 years ago that he did not have permission to be the head of state and therefore had to be stopped one way or another. This is not about his policies as such but about the revolt against elite rule that he seems to represent.
Trump is a sign and symbol, not a prime mover but an archetype of what this change means. If he did not exist, history would have selected another of his sort. This is because the old system is no longer sustainable.
The migration patterns—people and wealth are fleeing New England and New York for Texas, Florida, and the South and West generally—underscore the point. The system constructed around the old elite hierarchies is unraveling.
At this point, however, there is no stopping the change of course. We are seeing it in Latin America and all over Europe, a new generation of leaders cropping up from outside the system, backed by popular movements that are challenging the old hegemonic hierarchies.
In this struggle, victory will not come all at once or soon, but the outlines of what is coming are quite clear. We are seeing the end of an old paradigm and its replacement by a new one. Once you understand this, the desiderata of the daily headlines start to make sense. The old guard is panicked because it can see the end in view.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
