"When the Going Was Good: American Life in the Fifties" Jeffrey Hart

 Sunday is Mother’s Day. With all the nonsense we hear today, motherhood is the most important role for the continuation of our species, or any species for that matter. Make sure you celebrate with your mother, or, if she is no longer with us, make sure to remember her with love. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

“When the Going Was Good: American Life in the Fifties,” 1982

Jeffrey Hart 

May 11, 2023

 

“History is time memorialized…

And that, gentlemen, is why history must be told.”

                                                                                                                Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888-1973)

                                                                                                                Professor of Philosophy, Dartmouth College

                                                                                                                As quoted by Jeffrey Hart

 

When history is written by those who experienced it, there is a freshness not available from those who write of the distant past. On the other hand, such histories lack the perspective that time and distance provide. However, like Only Yesterday, Frederick Lewis Allen’s history of the 1920s, this is a fascinating book.

 

Hart was born in Brooklyn in 1930, where he was a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and played tennis. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School, received both his AB and PhD from Columbia, but spent most of his life in New Hampshire where he was professor of English at Dartmouth from 1963 to 1993. In 1963, he began writing for William Buckley’s National Review. As well, he spent time as a speech writer for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and he was faculty advisor to the Dartmouth Review.

 

“By and large,” Hart wrote, “people felt good about themselves and their country during the fifties.” For sixteen years, from 1929 until 1945, the nation had experienced Depression and War. While the post-War period was interrupted by the Korean conflict, it was a time of strong economic growth, scientific advancement, and nuclear deterrence. Americans appreciated the role their nation had played in the War and in the post-War global recovery. Hart quotes Columbia history professor, the French-born Jacques Barzun’s God’s Country and Mine, a celebration of America: “…we have here a complete Europe – Swedes cheek by jowl with Armenians, Hungarians with Poles…No one can say that all is love and kisses in this grand mixture. In many towns there are two sides of the railroad tracks…But at what a rate these distinctions disappear…In Europe a thousand years of war, pogroms and massacres settle nothing.” “Barzun,” Hart wrote, “is well aware of the blacks, Chinese, Hispanics, and American Indians, but he sets against the darker spots the larger panorama…Like Gertrude Stein, Barzun sees America as the modern nation.” So has Hart.

 

The reader is provided a window on this “extraordinary period in American life.” We read of the Eisenhower Presidency; Korea; the McCarthy hearings; the Brooklyn Dodgers – their last game at Ebbets Field and Pee Wee Reese waving farewell; tennis lessons from Bill Tilden; Levittown; rock and roll; jet planes and TV; computers and air conditioning; the ‘Pill’; the Interstate Highway Act and Atom Bomb shelters; Broadway shows and Hollywood musicals: and how the deaths of Robert Taft and John Foster Dulles book-ended the decade in Republican politics. He writes of the intellectual life, of Lionel Trilling, Mark van Doren, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr: “Contrary to current opinion, the fifties were years of intellectual ferment and intense excitement…” They ended,” Hart wrote, “in extravagances of feelings and behavior.”

 

William Buckley wrote the introduction: “For those who didn’t live through this decade, or weren’t aware of having done so, this is the liveliest trot they could imagine.” The going was good; so is this book.

"So, Who's the Liberal?"

 

Despite headlines of portending doom and schadenfreude-laden Cassandras who thrive on tales of woe, 2023 has had a decent first ten days. While internal squabbling has made House Republicans look amateurish, we should never forget that our Representatives are not expected to always march together in sync. Stocks are up about a percent and a half, the yield on the Ten-year has declined about 25 basis points, the VIX has declined modestly, and the Dollar has retained its strength. On Monday, the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization issued a report in which they found a “significant thickening” of the ozone layer (“a bit of good news for the planet”), suggesting that perhaps our grandchildren will have a world in which they can live. Topping things off, the January 2023 issue of The Spectator published an article, “The great anti-ESG backlash,” foretelling the end of a policy that has brought political correctness to investing and bank lending, a policy that Warren Buffett has called “asinine.” And, at least for a few months, we will be rid (or mostly rid) of politicians politicking. 

 

Onward, as Charon was wont to say, as his ferry slipped its mooring on the river Hades.

 

Sydney M. Williams

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“So, Who’s the Liberal?”

January 11, 2023

 

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 

“it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

 

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

 

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

                                                                                                                                Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

                                                                                                                                Through the Looking Glass, 1871

 

The word liberal reminds one of Humpty Dumpty’s proclamation. It means different things to different people. The word is polysemous. To the Left it means big government, which actively supports social change. To the Right it refers to less government interference, the endorsement of individual rights, civil liberties, and free markets. The word stems from the Latin, liber, meaning free or unimpeded. In Lewis Carroll’s story, the word that caused the skirmish was glory, when used as a verb. “They’ve a temper – some of them, particularly verbs,” Humpty Dumpty says to a puzzled Alice. The word liberal is not temperamental (at least as far as I know), but it can self-camouflage, to ambush the unsuspecting. 

 

Over the years, the Left has usurped the word. so that for most the word refers to those who prefer a large role for government in their lives, while conservatives have become deplorables, birthers, conspirators, or just plain racists or right-wing nuts. We on the right should seize the word back. In his 1953 book The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk wrote of Edmund Burke (1729-1797), of how he defended the liberties of Englishmen against their king and of Americans against king and parliament. He defended those liberties not because they were innovations, “…but because they were ancient prerogatives, guaranteed by immemorial usage. Burke was liberal because he was conservative.” (Highlights mine.)

 

It is amusing to consider how the definition of liberal has morphed over time, so that today’s social liberals consider themselves the sole owners of the word, “even as,” Daniel Henninger wrote in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, “they surrender to the state an array of long assumed freedoms – of opinion, speech, and privacy.” Classical liberals believe that such rights, along with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” are natural; they are God-given. The purpose of government is to secure and ensure those rights, not to dictate social behavior.  

 

While classical (conservative) liberals emphasize the freedom of the individual to achieve his or her goals, they recognize the necessity of government in maintaining order, in protecting us from enemies, in providing a quality high school education, in ensuring a sound currency, in adjudicating differences, and in making sure that the sick and the elderly – those who cannot care for themselves – live comfortable lives. At the same time, they emphasize the dignity of work, personal independence, self-determination, personal responsibility and accountability, and the importance of thinking for oneself.

 

On the Left there are social liberals who see the state’s role as being ubiquitous, that equality should include outcomes as well as opportunities, that ease of voting should trump security of the polls (they are equally important), and that healthcare should be free for all. Their efforts have encouraged the growth of the administrative state, creating agencies with expansive legislative, regulatory, and judicial powers. Have they pushed liberalism too far? In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Andy Kessler wrote: “Liberals, implied in the name, say they are for freedom, but are they? The progressive wing is full of authoritarians telling others what to do or how to think: America is a racist country. Wear a mask. Limit charter schools. Bees are fish (in California.)” Regulatory bodies, created by Congress and managed by unelected bureaucrats, are not accountable to the people. Their powers, however, can be unleashed – or restrained – by whomever is President. Recently courts have begun to push back, questioning, for example, the doctrine of “deference to regulators.” It is the Left that comprises the bulk of college professors and administrators, and they decide what speech and which speakers are acceptable. Social liberals control the teachers’ unions and most of mainstream and social media. In Up from Liberalism (1959), Williams Buckley (1925-2008) wrote: “Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them that there are other points of view.” Are liberals open to contrary opinions? Am I? I hope so.

 

Is it liberal to call those who question the efficacy of a vaccine anti-vaxxers? Is it liberal to denounce as deniers those who question the contention that man is the primary (or sole) reason for climate change? Is it liberal for a university liberal arts professor to deny a speaker who does not hew to a preferred political ideology? Can a liberal believe in tradition and custom? I am not sure about a social liberal, but a classical liberal would answer yes, when the question refers to long-established modes of behavior: accepted manners, respect for others, humility, and charity. But he or she would not if it meant providing advantages to preferred groups – racial, national, or ethnic – whether it is America in the 1950s or in the 2020s. Is it liberal to replace merit and achievement with identity essentialism? I think not.

 

Who is a liberal? It depends, as Lewis Carroll wrote, on who is using the word. But well-intentioned authoritarianism, whether from the Right or the Left, is not liberalism. A school friend, now living in Denver and with whom I reconnected fourteen years ago at our fiftieth reunion, writes a clever, satirical piece, The Apocryphal Press. He puts to rest the old belief among conservatives that the Left is devoid of humor. Today, we are good friends, yet we stand at opposite ends of the political spectrum. We both describe ourselves as liberals. And yet, while I believe my friend when he professes to be liberal, I see nothing liberal about policies his side backs: universities that deny conservatives the right to be heard, schools that teach gender identification to pre-teens, biased media organizations, corporations that require adherence to woke dogma, social policies that disrupt or discourage family formations, and an administration that demands social media companies comply with demands regarding vaccinations and that still fails to enforce immigration laws at the border. And I see nothing liberal about politicians – on both sides of the aisle – who lie about their backgrounds.

 

So, who is a liberal? Perhaps they have become endangered, at least in Washington.

"Common Sense - Where Has It Gone?"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Common Sense – Where Has It Gone?”

September 29, 2021

 

“Common sense is seeing things as they are,

and doing things as they ought to be.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

 

Common sense: noun – sound and prudent judgement. Its best antonym: unreasonable – without reason.

 

Common sense is a phrase we all know but rarely practice. So why is it called common? In A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire wrote: “Common sense is not so common.” It does not appear to exist among our cultural and political elite, where reason has given way to ideology. Ralph Waldo Emerson is alleged to have said: “Common Sense is genius dressed in working clothes.” That is, perhaps, what William Buckley meant when he said he would rather be governed by the first four hundred names in the Boston telephone directory than the Harvard faculty? Today, politicians, professors, CEOs, the media and many in the world of entertainment dress more informally, which may be sensible in terms of personal comfort, but a lack of common sense pulsates through their daily activities and commentaries. 

 

Common sense has been banished by the self-righteous. This part of Connecticut is not immune. Last week, in my local paper The Day, appeared an article about the sensible (my word) refusal of Old Lyme’s First Selectman (a Republican) to bring to a vote a resolution proposed by the Democratic Selectwoman which would identify racism as a public health crisis. His refusal was based, first, on the question: What does racism have to do with public health? Secondly, he pointed out such a resolution would imply the town has a race problem. Even the Democratic Selectwoman has said that she does not believe the people in Old Lyme are racist, yet she wants this resolution. Admittedly, the town of 7,000 is estimated to be 97.4% white, but that does not mean the community is racist. Certainly, the Republican First Selectman is not. His daughter is married to a black man whom, with his wife and children, we often see at our beach club. And Old Lyme is among a handful of Connecticut towns that welcome refugees.

 

So, why does she insist on such a resolution? Does she feel pangs of “white” guilt because of who she is and where she lives? Does she believe systemic racism infests Old Lyme? Or does she expect that accusations of racism will help Democrats’ cause? The answer seems obvious. She is motivated by politics and a lack of common sense. Social justice, systemic racism and anthropological-caused climate change are lightning rods, which activate the juices of hypocritical progressives. Common sense be damned.

 

We see this lack of common sense everywhere. Does it make sense to say that the “rich” should pay their “fair share,” and then say you want to reinstate SALT (state and local taxes) deductions, when 95% of the benefit accrues to the top one percent of wage earners? Or is that simply hypocrisy?  Corporations have adopted to this new world by claiming support for all “stakeholders.” It is a feel-good word, but does it say anything new? Years ago, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) observed: “He who serves the public best, makes the highest profits.” In Iacocca: An Autobiography (1984), Lee Iacocca wrote: “In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, products, profit.” Over four million businesses were created in 2020, with about 600,000 failing. According to the Center for M.I.T. Entrepreneurship, most new businesses are not cash flow positive for 3-5 years. If a business is not profitable, no one is served – not the employees, customers, suppliers, tax agencies or owners. Consider, when the Left decries the inequities of capitalism, the words of Thomas Sowell in Controversial Essays: “No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk, but the free market walks the walk.”

 

Bjorn Lomborg, in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, wrote that according to a forthcoming Lancet study: “More than 45% of people 16 to 25 in the ten countries surveyed are so worried (about climate change) that it affects their daily life and functioning.” Does that reflect sensible behavior on the part of their teachers? Was it common sense that allowed an uncompromising focus on renewables to cause electricity prices in Connecticut to rise by 14% last June? Regarding the stalled $3.5 trillion spending bill, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) recently tweeted: “Paid leave is infrastructure. Childcare is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure.” Common sense tells us they are not. Bridges, tunnels and roads are infrastructure, not entitlements. Her comments are part of a narrative that lacks reason and truth. It was “virtue-signaling that led to pride flags, gender studies and George Floyd murals in Kabul,” as Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote, when common sense would have had the U.S. maintain Bagram Airfield until the last American, ally, and Afghani who had assisted allied forces had left Afghanistan. Did General Mark A. Milley show common sense when he made those Dr. Strangelove-like calls to General Li Zuocheng? Do calls for defunding the police, despite rising murder rates in inner cities, reflect common sense? What about the discrimination exhibited in schools and colleges in setting different standards for students based on race? Is not that sanctimonious discrimination? Does it make common sense to mandate masks and vaccinations for university students and business employees, yet let in tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, without requiring either masks or vaccines? 

 

It is not as though the U.S. is not faced with real problems, which common sense would address. To name four: Debt and deficits: The ratio of federal debt to GDP is approaching what it was in World War II, and that does not include unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. In 1960, mandatory spending (entitlements, like Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid, etc.) accounted for about 25% of the federal budget. Today, that number is close to 70%. Education: We spend more per student than most any other country. Yet, we are failing many, mostly in Democrat-controlled, inner cities. In the 2018 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), which tests 15-year-olds around the world, the United States ranks below the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) average. As well, college costs have become untethered from reality. Families: It is well understood that children raised in two-parent households fare better economically and emotionally. Yet, family formations have been in decline in the U.S. for sixty years. In 1960, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, 73% of children were raised in two-parent households. By 2014, that had declined to 46%. Culture: As a nation, we have descended into a morass of multiculturalism, political correctness and wokeism, which has left us bereft of a national moral compass.

 

Common sense is looking at the world through clear lenses. It sees the world as it is, as Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote, not as one would like it to be. Like classical liberalism, common sense is based on empiricism, experience and research.; it is skeptical of fashion. It recognizes differences in people, not in races. It acknowledges there are two biological genders, not the 57 that OpenLearn suggests. It adheres to the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have done unto you; it is learning right from wrong and practicing the civilities once taught by parents, and in schools, Synagogues and Churches. Common sense allows us to focus on the individual, rather than the collective.

 

Horse sense is a synonym for common sense. The former was once defined by the comedian and actor W.C. Fields: “Horse sense is a thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.” Yet we, with people-sense and with government encouragement, bet on everything, from Lotteries to sports to horses – which common sense tells us is a loser’s game and regressive taxation. Common sense, where have you gone? 

"Thoughts on Voting, Including Ranked Choice Voting"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Thoughts on Voting, Including Ranked Choice Voting”

July 7, 2021

 

“Our life is frittered away by detail.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.”

                                                                                                                               Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

                                                                                                                               Walden, 1854

 

Because of technology we are able to live in a complex world. Yet, we make better decisions, when, as Confucius said, we make the complicated simple. Through early voting and no-excuse absentee voting, officials have made voting more accessible but associated complexities have increased the likelihood of fraud. Debate persists as to whether those changes have proven efficacious.  Now, there is a renewed effort to improve the election process through the (re)introduction of ranked choice voting (RCV). 

 

From a personal perspective, I am not a fan of early voting for two reasons: One, it deprives the voter of weighing issues until Election Day and, two, early voters are more likely to go to the polls following a pep rally, so their decisions are likely to be emotional rather than deliberative. As for absentee voting, I believe that, to the extent possible, voters who are able should vote in person. Not only does is it simpler, it is easier to assure that the voter is legitimate. As for ranked choice voting, I lean in its favor.

 

RCV is used in elections when three or more candidates are on the ballot, as it eliminates the need for a runoff election. As the name implies, it allows voters to rank choices by preference, i.e., 1 - 5. When the votes are tallied, if one candidate has won an outright majority, then he or she wins the election. If not, the candidate with the fewest number of first choice votes is eliminated. Those who voted for that candidate have their votes transferred to their second choice. This continues until a single candidate gains a majority. If the process is prolonged, some ballots will be eliminated – “exhausted” is the term used.

 

Feedback regarding RCV suggests that problems lie not in the counting of votes, but with voters’ abilities to process the complexities of the ballot. In a New York Times article in February 2020, Jacey Fortin wrote, “…members of the N.A.A.C.P. and the City’s Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus spoke out against ranked choice voting. They were partly worried that it could hurt candidates of color, and that a more complicated ballot would reduce turnout.” In an op-ed in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Michael Saltsman and Rebekah Paxton quoted Jason McDaniel, a political scientist at San Francisco State University: “…turnout declines among African-American and white voters [were] significantly correlated with adoption of RCV.” To me, both comments reek of condescension. 

 

Proponents of RCV say it would strengthen majority victories with broadly acceptable winners, though the ultimate winner may be the second or third choice of some voters. (Perhaps it is right that a politician know whether or not he or she is a plurality victor?) Some say it would increase voter turnout, thought the jury is out on that claim. Those in favor of RCV tell us campaigns would be less divisive, though New York City’s recent Democratic Mayoral primary questions that assumption. And, by eliminating the need for runoffs, RCVs should reduce the amounts of money needed in campaigns. Andrew Yang has argued that RCV will lead to fewer ideological extremists.

 

Opponents claim its complexity would dampen voter turnout. New York City Council Member Adrienne Adams said it would allow candidates to “game the system.” Simon Waxman of Harvard University Press noted that voters who have their ballots eliminated through “exhaustion” have no say in the final outcome. Other critics have said it gives advantage to incumbents and those whose names are well known, but that is true in any election. Problems in New York City’s last month’s Democratic Mayoral primary, reflected, as John Fund pointed out in the June issue of The Spectator, corruption and incompetence at the New York City Board of Elections, not anything inherently wrong with RCV. 

 

Ranked choice voting dates to the 19^th Century. In the Times article quoted above, Ms. Fortin wrote that the idea was “promoted by the philosopher John Stuart Mill in 1861,” and that a version was “developed about a decade later by William Ware, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” RCV is not foreign to many voters. According to Wikipedia, it is used in at least twenty U.S. cities and in many states, in lieu of runoff elections. It is also used in non-government elections, including those in hundreds of schools and more than eighty-five colleges and universities. 

 

In the debate over ranked choice voting, we should not let a quest for the perfect detract from what is important – keeping elections simple and secure. Two rules should govern all elections: One, every eligible citizen should be permitted to vote. Two, voter IDs should be required, as no one who is not eligible should be allowed to vote. All other rules are secondary. As long as the process is simple and seen to be honest, most people, as William Buckley inferred many years ago, have confidence in the collective intelligence of the American voter and, therefore, in outcomes.

"Meritocracy"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Meritocracy”

July 25, 2020

“They should all live together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence,

and the disgrace of evil and credit of worthy acts their one measure of difference between man and man.”

                                                                                                Plutarch (c.47AD – c.119AD)

                                                                                                Plutarch’s Lives: Volume 1, c.100AD

“I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone

 directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University”

                                                                                                            William Buckley (1925-2008)

                                                                                                            As quoted by Alvin Felzenberg

                                                                                                            Wall Street Journal, Feb. 26, 2018

The word meritocracy has Latin and Greek roots. It is a system where economic goods and political power are vested in individuals on the basis of talent, effort and achievement, rather than on wealth or social class. The word was popularized in 1958 by Michael Young, a British sociologist and politician in a book The Rise of Meritocracy, which satirized the tripartite school system in England that put children, at age eleven, onto one of three paths toward future education opportunities: Grammar schools for those heading to university; technical training for those with mechanical skills, and secondary schooling for all others. Forty-three years later, Mr. Young wrote an article for The Guardian in which he said his satire had been stripped of its meaning and had been embraced by an elite to justify their status.

Meritocracy is under attack. In a piece for The New Yorker last September, “Is Meritocracy Making Everyone Miserable?”, Louis Menand, author of The Metaphysical Club, wrote: “In recent years, we have been focused on two problems, social mobility and income inequality…” Mr. Menand cited Daniel Markovits, author of The Meritocracy Trap who concluded “that the whole system is a Frankenstein’s monster. We created meritocracy with good intentions, and now we are its victims.” Meritocracy, it is true and like free-market capitalism, does create inequalities – a natural process. Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford’s Hoover Institute went further. “Merit,” he wrote earlier this month, “will soon become a dirty, counterrevolutionary word.” When it no longer works to the advantage of elites, it is renounced.

Ross Douthat, in an op-ed in last Sunday’s New York Times, “The Real White Fragility,” wrote that if white privilege is a result of meritocracy then “good” liberals will abandon it. Doing so, Mr. Douthat noted, will fit with stresses in their lives, like expensive housing and fewer well-paying jobs. Competition is fierce and rewards less. We have, he wrote, “a surplus of smart young Americans pursuing admission to a narrow list of elite colleges whose enrollment does not expand with population.”  Visiting students near his home in Hamden, Connecticut, he noted a “disappearance of serenity, the evaporation of contentment and the spread of anxiety,” which he had experienced in his years at Harvard twenty years earlier. The discarding of SAT requirements and with some charter schools de-emphasizing hard work, discipline and “being nice” meshes with “woke” liberals’ perceptions and created Mr. Markovits’ Frankenstein-like meritocracy.  

Through the mid 1950s elite eastern colleges depended on a small number of private “feeder” schools, populated with sons and daughters of wealthy, white and mostly Protestant families. Jewish students were discriminated against then, just as Asian students are today. Affirmative action, in the mid 1960s was an attempt at meritocracy, in that it helped underrepresented minorities, especially blacks and women. In his New Yorker piece, Mr. Menand wrote: “In 1965, the student population in American colleges was ninety-four percent white and sixty-one percent male…Today, fifty-six percent of students are classified as non-Hispanic whites and forty-two percent of students are male.” Where meritocracy does exist in universities is in the field of sports. A college that denies acceptance to the most qualified history student because he or she is Asian or white will seek the best athlete regardless of race, especially when abilities enhance sports that bring in the most money – football and basketball.  Diversity helps as long as it does not interfere with success on the gridiron or the basketball court.

Merit, from the Latin, is the quality of excellence and “cracy,” from the Greek, means strength and power. A meritocracy, then, is a system where the best lead. Over time, however, meritocrats learn to work the system for personal benefit; so, meritocracy develops flaws from within. As well, power breeds elitism and contempt. Like George Orwell’s ‘Napoleon,’ yesterday’s beneficiaries of meritocracy become tomorrow’s dictators. As William Buckley suggested in the rubric quoted above, meritocracy breeds its own demise through a supercilious intolerance on the part of leaders for those who oppose them. Position and power make them enemies of policies they once supported.

Yet a true meritocracy is what flushes the swamps filled with administrators and bureaucrats found in the halls of universities and in the corridors of Washington, D.C. True meritocracy means fresh blood, individuals with independent ideas, something impossible when the elites that lead our universities and run government bureaucracies come from the same schools, the same socio-economic backgrounds and bear the same political philosophies. Yet, with all its faults, what system is better than a meritocracy? It allows the able and tenacious to succeed, no matter their race, creed or sex. Today, critics of meritocracy blame it for social and economic inequalities, yet it champions a fundamental aspect of democracy – regardless of background, anyone with effort and talent can succeed. It is not meritocracy; it is abuse of power that is the problem.

Are the best qualified students deprived of the best education because a university administrator fears his or her job is at risk if an incoming class does not reflect the country’s population? Are publicly held companies held hostage to political correctness and concerns about “social justice?” These are questions that deserve consideration. Meritocracy is nature’s process of natural selection in its rawest form. Ironically, one of the few meritocratic businesses is professional sports – where minorities represent the largest percentage of the successful. Survival goes to the quickest, the strongest, the smartest, the fittest. It seems unlikely that the NFL, NBA, NHL or major league baseball will ever prioritize egalitarianism when filling their rosters. Why should they? Would fans prefer to watch the most diverse baseball team or the best?

From my own experience, a true meritocracy in business is rare. One exception was the Wall Street trading desk. In those tense, high-pressure rooms ability was valued higher than any other trait – old school ties or family connections made no difference. What counted was one’s skill in executing a profitable trade. I once sat next to Letitia Baldridge at dinner at the ‘21’ Club. Without asking where I worked, she told me the worse business manners in America were on the trading floor at Salomon Brothers, which was where I then worked as a salesman – not as a trader, I hasten to add. Amused by her comment, I explained that on the trading floor, civility and manners were suspended, at least until the market closed.