"Elitism"

 The photo was taken in the summer of 1951, with me on the far left. My youngest two brothers were yet to be born. We are in the backyard, sitting on a rock on which is mounted a granite carving of mother and child, which my father had sculpted ten years earlier. We are holding examples of my parent’s artwork.

 

I included the photo, as this essay incorporates a little of my personal (and unique) non-elitist upbringing.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Elitism”

October 29, 2025

 

“When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.”

                                                                                                Mark Twain (1835-1910)

                                                                                                A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1889

 

The word “elite” has roots in both Latin and Old French, meaning to choose. As an adjective it meant “elected,” or “chosen.” While the word appeared briefly in Middle English (1100-1500AD), it only reappeared in the mid-19^th Century, meaning a “choice or select body.” The word is not in Webster’s 1828 dictionary. Wikipedia defines the word: “A small group of powerful or wealthy people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group.” Nevertheless, when used today to describe the politically and financially powerful, the word is often used as a pejorative. 

 

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Just as cream floats to the top of an unhomogenized bottle of milk, the brightest and most talented, left untethered, will rise to the top of society. That is nature’s way. It is when position and power are used to enhance and protect one’s privileged status that corruption ensues. 

 

For most of our Country’s history, elites who ran our financial and industrial businesses, who educated our young at prestigious universities and who governed our Country were drawn from east coast, WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) families – those who were wealthy, educated and civic-minded. They embodied the concept of “noblesse oblige,” but they protected their position through discrimination in education, in business opportunities, and in their social lives. However, time caught up to them. Their wealth, singular education, and political influence began to wane following the Depression and World War II. Like today’s elites, they had little in common with the average American. In a recent issue of The Spectator, Madeline Grant wrote of how WASPs are now in their twilight years, as “meritocracy and modernity” have edged them out. Ms. Grant, in my opinion, is late with her analysis, as I believe this transition has been underway for eighty years. While our nation was better off when merit replaced privilege, today it feels like the same game, but with different players. 

 

I had a seat to this transition. My parents were born into wealth and privilege – my mother’s family in New Haven and my father’s in a Boston suburb. They grew up in large houses with servants, separate summer residences and had traveled abroad. My maternal grandfather, however, fell victim to the Swedish financial swindler Ivar Krueger in 1932, the same year my father left Harvard, after four years but without a degree. A budding sculptor and artist, he had no interest in following his father into the world of finance. My parents met five years later while studying sculpture in Gloucester, Massachusetts and were married in 1938.

 

They raised nine children in an early 19^th Century farm house owned by his parents in circumstances quite different from their upbringings. There was a woodstove in the kitchen for cooking and heating and another in the dining room for heat, along with a fireplace in the living room. A coal furnace furnished hot water and an oil burner in the stairwell provided some heat to the upstairs. Horses were a vestige of their prior lives, but goats and chickens provided milk and eggs. When visiting grandparents, I saw the other side. 

 

When a vacuum develops, as it did with WASPS fading from halls of political power, nature requires it be filled. Washington’s progressive politicians, bureaucrats, along with their Wall Street friends, Hollywood’s hypocrites, and union leaders were ready. In 1962, President Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988, which gave the right of collective bargaining to federal employees. Today, two unions represent 930,000 federal employees, or about 15% of total U.S. union membership. In 1960, the average federal employee made about 15% less than a private sector employee in a similar job. Today, the average salary for a college-educated federal employee is higher than his private sector equivalent, and with better benefits. It is unsurprising that three of the five wealthiest counties in the United States are in the Virginia suburbs: Loudon, Falls Church and Fairfax.

 

Everything in Washington has become grander and more expensive, as a new class of “progressive” elites assumed the mantle. They wanted bigger government. The cost to win a seat in the U.S. Senate has risen by 50 to 100 times over sixty years. While accurate statistics are not available, I am informed by AI that “Congress,” in 1960, “was generally more representative of the country’s economic makeup” than it is now. Today, the median net worth of members of Congress exceeds $1 million. Again, and again according to AI, a 2022 analysis found “97 lawmakers [out of 535 members of Congress] or their families traded stocks in industries that could be affected by their committee memberships between 2019 and 2012.” Both major political parties are guilty. Using inside information for personal gain is one area where there appears to be consensus among Party leaders. As well, and fueling charges of elitism, about 17% of Congress have Ivy League degrees, while the comparable number for the U.S. is roughly 0.3%. Turnover in Congress has declined, as re-districting has limited interparty competition. One-Party states have become more common. For example, in New England where about one third of voters are registered Republicans, there are no Republicans in the House of Representatives and only one Republican Senator, Susan Collins of Maine. 

 

It is my belief that we are in the early stages of the diminishing influence of identity politics and the progressive elites who have dominated our schools, big businesses, and government for the last twenty-five years. Today’s Democrats are reminiscent of postbellum Republicans in their maintaining and continuing positions of privilege and political power. In admissions to the country’s oldest and finest universities, progressives replaced meritocracy with a preference for race, diversity and inclusion. (WASPs had shown a preference for their own kind.) In the classroom, they denigrated conservative opinions. They forewent a belief in a universal Judeo-Christian morality and advanced the concept of moral relativism. In Washington they favored politically palatable industries, and they used lawfare to disparage the democratically elected President Trump throughout his first term.

 

Whether Mr. Trump represents the peak of moral relativism and the end of progressive elitism, I don’t know, but my sense is that we are at a turning point. Regardless, in time progressive elitists will, like their WASP predecessors, be relegated to the dust bins of history. But whoever replaces them they, too, will eventually fall into the same trap, for human nature is unchanging. They will use their influence to maintain their positions, bring along their allies and political preferences, and they will foil and delay change. Creative destruction – when driven by merit and where change leads to improvement – is positive, not just in the world of business, but in personal and political lives. When that next batch of elites becomes pervasive, forego accountability, and when they feel irreplaceable – that they are deserving of their unearned positions – it will be time for still another change.

 

If I am correct that the current ephemeral elitism of identity-fixated progressives, hastened by what looks to be the election of the Socialist and anti-Semite Zohran Mamdani as New York City’s next mayor, is being propelled, gradually, out of the ring, we may well be in for a few years of relief. One can hope.