An excerpt from Paul Johnson’s sweeping A History of the American People
[Thomas Jefferson’s] first hero was his fellow-Virginian Patrick Henry, who seemed to be everything Jefferson was not: a firebrand, a man of extremes, a rabble-rouser, and an unreflective man of action – Jefferson was 17 when he met him and he was present in 1765 when Henry acquired instant fame for his flamboyant denunciation of the Stamp Act. Jefferson admired him no doubt for possessing the one gift he himself lacked — the power to rouse men’s emotions by the spoken word.
Jefferson had a more important quality, however: the power to analyze a historical situation in depth, to propose a course of conduct, and present it in such a way as to shape the minds of a deliberative assembly … It was Jefferson, in 1774, who encapsulated the entire debate in one brilliant treatise — Summary View of the Rights of British America…
Jefferson relied heavily on Chapter Five of John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, which set out the virtues of a meritocracy, in which men rise by virtue, talent, and industry. Locke argued that the acquisition of weath, even on a large scale, was neither unjust nor morally wrong, provided it was fairly acquired. So, he said, society is necessarily stratified, but by merit, not by birth. This doctrine of industry as opposed to idleness as the determining factor in a just society militated strongly against kings, against governments of nobles and their placemen, in favor of representative republicanism.
Jefferson’s achievement, in his tract, was to graft onto Locke’s meritocratic structures two themes which became the dominant leitmotifs of the Revolutionary struggle. The first was the primacy of individual rights: “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” Equally important was the placing of these rights within the context of Jefferson’s deep and in a sense more fundamental commitment to popular sovereignty. “From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation.”
It was Jefferson’s linking of popular sovereignty with liberty, both rooted in a divine plan, and further legitimized by ancient practice and the English tradition, which gave the American colonists such a strong, clear, and plausible conceptual basis for their action. Neither the British government nor the American loyalists produced arguments which had a fraction of this power. They could appeal to the law as it stood, and duty as they saw it, but that was all. Just as the rebels won the media battle (in America) from the start, so they rapidly won the ideological battle too.
I remember reading this passage and thinking “of course – how can any intellectually honest person not see that meritocracy is the only fair way to run a society”. Since then, I have learned that meritocracy has many, entrenched, stubborn enemies in modern America. Instead today we have “special-interest-ocracy”, where your opportunity is determined not by merit, but by your ability to claim victimhood, usually based on your appearance. Jefferson is (probably) rolling in his grave. I have found that if you want meritocracy, you have to be an entrepreneur. Only the free market truly rewards merit.
CW –
Have you read the book In Defense of Elitism? It came out a couple years ago.
Oooo baby! I love it when you go on about empirical philosophy! More! MORE!
Sheila-
In Defense of Elitism is older than that, but it’s a terrific book (assuming you mean the one written by William Henry). I think it was written around 1994. I recently reread it. It’s amazing to me how the word “elitist” has become a slur. Do people really think that all people are inherently equal beyond the level of “equally deserving of the same rights”? Sorry, but some people are better at singing than other people. And better at skiing. And better at acting. And yes, better at thinking. This seems plainly obvious to me.
Yes, that’s the book I mean. Maybe what I should have said is: “I BOUGHT the book a couple of years ago” not “It came out a couple of years ago”, but what can I say. It’s all about ME.
The book was so galvanizing, so enraging. Things are getting more and more ridiculous – one can only hope it’s a phase.
Do you ever listen to Clay Jenkinson, the jeffersonian scholar, on NPR? He’s great.
http://www.th-jefferson.org/
Sheila-
I just had a conversation about that book with my parents and brother when we met for dinner this past weekend. I mentioned the example that Henry uses in his book of the class in Shakespeare that he and his daughter both took. When he took it, they had to read all of Shakespeare’s plays in one term; when his daughter took it, she had to read a total of 4 of his plays.
Some 60% of Americans go to at least some college, which is double the rate of any other nation. After WW2 when the G.I. Bill kicked in, that rate took a huge jump, but the colleges quickly found out that there just weren’t twice as many people capable of doing college work than there were before that point. Not wanting to lose the cashflow coming from the boost in the number of students, they reacted by dumbing down the curriculum, which has since trickled down to elementary and secondary schools too.
When people ask me why I spend so much time defending science education against the attacks of creationists, this is basically my response – I want to draw a line in the sand. We’ve watered down education far too much already and it’s time to reverse that trend.
Ed,
Much of science education is simply the memorizing of facts, not demonstrations of true scientific method and understanding. That, unfortunately, has been true long before the dumbing down of the curriculum. The way science is taught to most high school students, it might as well be religion received from on high. Until we change that, the cultural relativists will continue to denigrate the place of science in our world.
I have to agree about the numbers / quality game though. I taught too many students in intro Chemistry who did not know basic math. How can I teach (college) students elementary chemical kinetics if they don’t know what a logarithm is?
John-
I certainly agree that we need to do a much better job of teaching the philosophy of science as opposed to merely memorizing the conclusions. Every time I hear someone say “that’s just a theory, not a proven fact” or similar inanity, I’m reminded of that. But the real threat to science education doesn’t come from cultural relativists (by which I assume you mean attacks on science from the left in the form of feminist critiques, postmodernism and deconstructionism) but from cultural absolutists, meaning fundamentalists who are, at bottom, reactionary anti-modernists. If I misunderstood your meaning, I apologize.
I meant both, but you are right. I’m not so sure which one has more societal influence, though.
A few thoughts on meritocracy. . .
Do you merit more salary for a God given talent? You did not earn that gift from God or a talent that is a matter of genetic whim.
It is given that most people who are very talented work hard at developing their talent and I would not deny that.
Does say a firefighter merit more than a entertainer such as a sport star or a actor?
Do you merit wealth because you are good at and work hard at being a mafiaoso?
Maybe I am just splitting hairs, just never really thought it through.
Also, to put a finer point on it. IMO the free market really rewards self-interest. As with any human endeavor, we can abuse it. In the real world “merit” can include amongst other things:
Ass-kissing
sexual favors
political favors
good ole boy networks
payola
bribery
nepotism
favoritism
Well, the bloated salaries of certain professions are a whole other story!
The point in the book In Defense of Elitism, though, is that – the quickest kid in the class should not be made to slow down so that the slowest kid in the class won’t feel bad.
Self-esteem should not be the most important thing you teach a child.
There should be some value in being the “best”, and we should not be afraid to say that something is the “best”.
I mean, in the current climate, it’s amazing that schools even HAVE valedictorians anymore.
I remember one of Bill Maher’s cautic monologues on Politically Incorrect where he berated the current trend of giving every kid in Little League a trophy, as opposed to the best players.
“Kids get trophies just for showing up nowadays.”
And so – standards are lowered. Kids think that just showing up is all that will be asked of them. They should be congratulated just for showing up.
I mean, I saw that shit in grad school, with my fully adult classmates, whose attitude seemed to be, “Hey, I’m here aren’t I?” It drove me nuts.
Well this turned out to be a really good discussion.
I read “In Defense of Elitism” when it came out and really enjoyed it – I thought at least there’s one other person in the world who still believes in actual merit. If I remember correctly, it came out just before the World Wide Web took off and gave everyone a chance to be heard. I especially liked all of Henry’s examples – good pithy real reality to counteract much of what Western culture is selling as the approved, homogenized, version of it.
But since I read it I have sort of evolved my views of culture, society, and history. What Henry says about Western civilization is correct, but Western civilization is only a blip in the greater human experience. The best blip, perhaps, but still only a blip. While I think Western liberal ideals are worth promoting, the evolution of the human experience as inexorable – stuff is gonna change. Change in and of itself is valueless. I may like one version of society better than you, and you might prefer something different from an earlier or later version of yourself. We may both idealize the seemingly divinely-inspired intellectual accomplishments of the founding fathers, but they are only a small part of the big human picture.
Don’t get me wrong – I’ve spent a lifetime already fighting to defend and promote the ideals and ideas of founding fathers, and I’m not near done yet – but now I view the whole process as only one small piece of the puzzle.
I don’t mean to say that I’ve rejected elitism and now think that everything and everyone is equal because that makes people feel good. Actually it only makes the inferior people feel good. It makes the superior people feel bad. We’ve gone so far down the path of political correctness that you can’t even have a discussion about merit because if you are intellectually honest, not everything and everyone has the same merit. So the culture has redefined the acceptable terms of the discussion so that “merit” is now a dialectic concept.
I remember when I first learned about the dialectic basis of Marxism. I thought “we’ve got to stamp this out, because if it gets out of hand, civilization is doomed!” How naive I was.
Merit still isn’t dialectic to me, though, so I mostly keep to myself at the end of the earth.
For j Swift: nepotism and favoritism are what I understand to be the opposites of meritocracy. The idea of merit is potentially independent of value. I do not use the term “merit” as synonymous with “deserving” – trying to decide who “deserves” what is what has gotten us into the cultural mess we are now in.
For Ed: I really enjoy your defense of science, and think it really needs defending. But I swear I did not realize that creationism was anything like a threat to it. I really didn’t realize that there’s any serious debate about evolution. To me the threat to science is just what we’re talking about – dumbing down of reality in the name of egalitarianism, by education and culture, so everyone will feel better about themselves (except the meritocratic elite, of course).
Oh Red I forgot – in this same theme – and something I would have written about in my own damn blog if it worked – have you heard that the College Board people have revised the SATs?
Because the California University system was going to drop the SAT entirely because it discriminated on the basis of merit? Because the Californians could not easily discriminate on the basis of race – something that is illegal in California by the way – in their admissions process as long as they continued to use the SAT as a criteria?
So the College Boards have come up with a new SAT that has an essay that will be graded subjectively, and has dropped those pesky hard analogies? The new score is 2400 vs 1600 and the new system is designed to have a much smaller standard deviation, aiding the Californians in their goal of furthering racial discrimination.
Going to bed now…
“For j Swift: nepotism and favoritism are what I understand to be the opposites of meritocracy. The idea of merit is potentially independent of value. I do not use the term “merit” as synonymous with “deserving” – trying to decide who “deserves” what is what has gotten us into the cultural mess we are now in.”
I agree with you to a point. Nepotism and favoritism for a completely lazy, shiftless person would be the opposite. But I was thinking along the lines of the mediocre person who receives the benefits of nepotism and favoritism. This I would think would happen more often than the lazy person getting the benefit.
Also, I do not how you can completely divorce the idea of merit from “deserving” without making it entirely about self-interest and being the best at conforming to society.
The honor roll is notoreity and praise of parents (the value) that is earned or deserved by getting good grades. Likewise with the honor of being valedictorian. The valedictorian then gets the opportunity to go to college at a reduced cost or for free through scholarships etc. (again the value) Those things are earned and deserved.
Is there a real life example of competition solely for competition’s sake?