In Defense of Elitism<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0385479433\")
<\/i>, by William A. Henry III.<\/b><\/p>\nEgalitarians — or at least the sort who rile me — believe that all humans are equal (“men” being no longer a politically correct synonym for mankind) and, worse, that they should be<\/i>, on a more or less permanent basis, whatever the real-world differences in their performance and contribution. However much Karl Marx may have been rejected by the nations that once enshrined him and ostensibly followed his dicta, American egalitarians continue to believe Marxian romantic twaddle about the invariable blamelessness of the unaccomplished. They argue that talent is distributed evently along class and educational lines, in defiance of everything we know about eugenics. Consequently, they insist that differences in attainment are explained entirely by social injustice. Egalitarians fear and detest the competitive impulse. They regard exploration, conquest, and colonization as having been unrelievedly barbaric and destructive, thereby mulishly overlooking the impact those movements had in dispersing administratively and technologically superior cultures and compelling inferior ones to adapt. Egalitarians are the sort who are trying to end ability tracking in elementary and sometimes secondary education, on the theory that bright children ought to be helping slow ones rather than maximizing their own achievements and pulling ahead. (I’m not making this up. This is actually a popular, if not prevailing, educational theory.) Not far below the surface, this attitude embodies a Marxian belief that the smart pupils’ intelligence is not theirs alone to allocate and command but is instead a communal asset to be deployed for the whole class’ good.<\/p>\n
The same impulse is spreading into athletics, which used to be a safe haven for striving. The New York Times<\/i> reported in a May 1993 front-page article that if games are to be played, increasingly an elementary school class is apt to be divided into so many teams that no one is the last chosen. Children are thus supposedly shielded from noticing who is better or worse. For the most part, games and scores are avoided altogether in favor of self-development. Running is not necessarily timed; basketball hoops are adjusted in height and distance to fit each pupil’s capacity. The point is not to measure oneself against absolute standards but to feel good about exercise and taking part. That is about as concise and benign an embodiment of egalitarianism as I can imagine. And I still think it is pernicious.<\/p>\n
Elitists of equal misguidedness, and some of equal outright menace, permeate American society. I hold no brief for those who consider themselves superior by virtue of birth or theology — those who believe in the natural dominance of men or white people or Christians or heterosexuals (or of women or blacks or Muslims or homosexuals). To belong proudly to a selected or favored group is morally repellent when soemthing other than learning and achievement serves as the basis for that selection or favoritism. (In my mind, this applies to exclusive country and city clubs, however private they claim to be, and I consider it a valid claim to raise against appointees to public office.) Belief in rule by an elite is no better than bigotry when ability is not the sole basis for admission to the circle of the elect.<\/p>\n
The kind of elitists I admire are those who ruthlessly seek out and encourage intelligence and who believe that competition — and, inevitably, some measure of failure — will do more for character than coddling ever can. My kind of elitist does not grade on a curve and is willing to flunk the whole class. My kind of elitist detests the policy of social promotion that has rendered a high school diploma meaningless and a college degree nearly so. (All right, a Harvard degree means something. But what is the value of “honors” when up to two thirds of Harvard undergraduates have been getting them?) My kind of elitist hates tenure, seniority, and the whole union ethos that contends that workers are interchangeable and their performances essentially equivalent. My kind of elitist believed that maybe the worst thing about Japanes business was the de facto lifetime job guarantee it offered, and saluted the recent erosion of that pledge.<\/p>\n
Egalitarianism has done great good for American society. Who can dispute the rightness of ensuring legal counsel for indigent defendants in criminal cases or of compelling employers to fork over the pensions they promised to faithful and productive workers? Without the egalitarian impulse to ensure the funding of public schools in poor areas as well as rich ones, we could have no meaningful elitist impulse in judging those schools’ graduates.<\/p>\n
Wait a minute, I can hear ideological oppoents expostulating, it can never be as easy to learn in a poverty neighborhood’s school as in a plush one’s. Fairness does not compel giving way to egalitarianism to that extreme. Opportunity does not need to be exactly equal. It needs only to exist. For the talented and motivated, that will be enough. The rest may have a harder time. So be it. The vital thing is not to maximize everyone’s performance, but to ensure maximal performance from the most talented, the ones who can make a difference. Society typically makes the opposite and erroneous call; it underemphasizes winners and overassists mediocrities. That egalitarian style makes society more manageable politically, but at the price of productivity, and it ought to change.<\/p>\n
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The first book in this section of my bookcase is In Defense of Elitism<\/a>