The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy Quotes

“The “routine acceptance of professionals as a class apart” strikes Kaus as an ominous development. So does their own “smug contempt for the demographically inferior.” Part of the trouble, I would add, is that we have lost our respect for honest manual labor. We think of “creative” work as a series of abstract mental operations performed in an office, preferably with the aid of computers, not as the production of food, shelter, and other necessities. The thinking classes are fatally removed from the physical side of life—hence their feeble attempt to compensate by embracing a strenuous regimen of gratuitous exercise.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“The same benefits misleadingly associated with religion — security, spiritual comfort, dogmatic relief from doubt — are thought to flow from a therapeutic politics of identity. In effect, identity politics has come to serve as a substitute for religion — or at least for the feeling of self-righteousness that is so commonly confused with religion.
These developments shed further light on the decline of democratic debate. ‘Diversity’ — a slogan that looks attractive on the face of it — has come to mean the opposite of what it appears to mean. In practice, diversity turns out to legitimize a new dogmatism, in which rival minorities take shelter behind a set of beliefs impervious to rational discussion.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Many young people are morally at sea. They resent the ethical demands of "society" as infringements of their personal freedom. They believe that their rights as individuals include the right to "create their own values," but they cannot explain what that means, aside from the right to do as they please. They cannot seem to grasp the idea that "values" imply some principle of moral obligation. They insist that they owe nothing to "society"--an abstraction that dominates their attempts to think about social and moral issues. If they con-form to social expectations, it is only because conformity offers the line of least resistance.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Far from putting doubts and anxieties to rest religion often has the effect of intensifying them. It judges those who profess the faith more harshly than it judges unbelievers. It holds them up to a standard of conduct so demanding that many of them inevitably fall short. It has no patience with those who make excuses for themselves--an art in which Americans have come to excel. If it is ultimately forgiving of human weakness and folly, it is not because it ignores them or attributes them exclusively to unbelievers. For those who take religion seriously, belief is a burden, not a self-righteous claim to some privileged moral status. Self-righteousness, indeed, may well be more prevalent among skeptics than among believers. The spiritual discipline against self-righteousness is the very essence of religion.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Once knowledge is equated with ideology, it is no longer necessary to argue with opponents on intellectual grounds or to enter into their point of view. It is enough to dismiss them as Eurocentric, racist, sexist, homophobic in other words, as politically suspect.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Unable to conceive of a God who does not regard human happiness as the be-all and end-all of creation, they cannot accept the central paradox of religious faith: that the secret of happiness lies in renouncing the right to be happy.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“The last time the "best and brightest" got control of the country, they dragged it into a protracted, demoralizing war in Southeast Asia, from which the country has still not fully recovered. Yet Reich seems to believe that a new generation of Whiz Kids can do for the faltering American economy what Robert McNamara's generation failed to do for American diplomacy: to restore, through sheer brainpower, the world leadership briefly enjoyed by the United States after World War II and subsequently lost not, of course, through stupidity so much as through the very arrogance the "arrogance of power," as Senator William Fulbright used to call it to which the "best and brightest" are congenitally addicted.
This arrogance should not be confused with the pride characteristic of aristocratic classes, which rests on the inheritance of an ancient lineage and on the obligation to defend its honor. Neither valor and chivalry nor the code of courtly, romantic love, with which these values are closely associated, has any place in the world view of the best and brightest. A meritocracy has no more use for chivalry and valor than a hereditary aristocracy has for brains. Although hereditary advantages play an important part in the attainment of professional or managerial status, the new class has to maintain the fiction that its power rests on intelligence alone. Hence it has little sense of ancestral gratitude or of an obligation to live up to responsibilities inherited from the past. It thinks of itself as a self-made elite owing its privileges exclusively to its own efforts. Even the concept of a republic of letters, which might be expected to appeal to elites with such a large stake in higher education, is almost entirely absent from their frame of reference.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“The culture wars that have convulsed America since the sixties are best understood as a form of class warfare, in which an enlightened elite (as it thinks of itself) seeks not so much to impose its values on the majority (a majority perceived as incorrigibly racist, sexist, provincial, and xenophobic), much less to persuade the majority by means of rational public debate, as to create parallel or "alternative" institutions in which it will no longer be necessary to confront the unenlightened at all.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“The issues that give rise to strident professions of faith on both sides of the ideological divide seem to have little bearing on the problems most people face in everyday life. Politics has become a matter of ideological gestures while the real problems remain unsolved.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“To refer everything to a "plurality of ethical commitments" means that we make no demands on anyone and acknowledge no one's right to make any demands on ourselves. The suspension of judgment logically condemns us to solitude. Unless
we are prepared to make demands on one another, we can enjoy only the most rudimentary kind of common life.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“The current catchwords—diversity, compassion, empowerment, entitlement—express the wistful hope that deep divisions in American society can be bridged by goodwill and sanitized speech. We are called on to recognize that all minorities are entitled to respect not by virtue of their achievements but by virtue of their sufferings in the past. Compassionate attention, we are told, will somehow raise their opinion of themselves; banning racial epithets and other forms of hateful speech will do wonders for their morale. In our preoccupation with words, we have lost sight of the tough realities that cannot be softened simply by flattering people's self-image. What does it profit the residents of the South Bronx to enforce speech codes at elite universities?”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“There is a crucial difference between the acceptance of limitations and the impulse to reduce everything exalted to its lowest common denominator. “Acceptance” becomes shameless, cynical surrender when it can no longer distinguish between nobility and pomposity, refinement of taste and social snobbery, modesty and prudery. Cynicism confuses delusions of grandeur, which call for moral and therapeutic correction, with grandeur itself.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Today it is the elites...those who control the international flow of money and information, preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher learning, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus set the terms of public debate--that have lost faith in the values, or what remains of them, of the West.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Until we have to defend our opinions in public, they remain opinions in Lippmann’s pejorative sense—half-formed convictions based on random impressions and unexamined assumptions. It is the act of articulating and defending our views that lifts them out of the category of “opinions,” gives them shape and definition, and makes it possible for others to recognize them as a description of their own experience as well. In short, we come to know our own minds only by explaining ourselves to others.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Social criticism that addressed the real issue in higher education today - the university's assimilation into the corporate order, and the emergence of a knowledge class whose "subversive" activities do not seriously threaten any vested interest - would be a welcome addition to contemporary discourse. For obvious reasons, however, this kind of discourse is unlikely to get much encouragement either from the academic left, or from its critics on the right.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“The political process is dominated by rival elites committed to irreconcilable beliefs [...] the politics of ideology distorted our view of the world and confronted us with a series of false choices between feminism and the family, social reform and traditional values, racial justice and individual accountability. Ideological rigidity has the effect of obscuring the views Americans have in common, of replacing substantive issues with purely symbolic issues, and of creating a false impression of polarization.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Early admirers of the market - Adam Smith for example - believed that selfishness was a virtue only if it was confined to the realm of exchange. They did not advocate or even envision conditions in which every phase of life would be organized according to the principles of the market. Now that private life has been largely absorbed by the market, however, a new school of economic thought offers what amounts to a new moral vision: a society wholly dominated by the market, in which economic relations are no longer softened by ties of trust and solidarity.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“... careerism tends to undermined democracy by divorcing knowledge from practical experience; devaluing the kind of knowledge that is gained from experience and generating social conditions in which ordinary people are not expected to know anything at all. The reign of specialized expertise - the logical result of policies that equate opportunity with open access to places of higher consideration - is the antithesis of democracy as it was understood by those who saw this country as the last best hope on earth.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“The notion that egalitarian purposes could be served by the "restoration" of upward mobility betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding. High rates of mobility are by no means inconsistent with a system of stratification that concentrates power and privilege in a ruling elite. Indeed, the circulation of elites strengthens the principle of hierarchy, furnishing elites with fresh talent and legitimating their ascendancy as
a function of merit rather than birth.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Meritocratic elites find it difficult to imagine a community, even a community of the intellect, that reaches into both the past and the future and is constituted by an awareness of intergenerational obligation. The "zones" and "networks" admired by Reich bear little resemblance to communities in any traditional sense of the term. Populated by transients, they lack the continuity that derives from a sense of place and from standards of conduct self-consciously cultivated and handed down from generation to generation. The "community" of the best and brightest is a community of contemporaries, in the double sense that its members think of themselves as agelessly youthful and that the mark of this youthfulness is precisely their ability to stay on top of the latest trends.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“The difficulty of limiting the influence of
wealth suggests that wealth itself needs to be limited. When money talks, everybody else is condemned to listen. For that reason a democratic society cannot allow unlimited
accumulation. Social and civic equality presuppose at least a rough approximation of economic equality. A "plurality of spheres," as Walzer calls it, is eminently desirable, and we should do everything possible to enforce the boundaries among them. But we also need to remember that boundaries are permeable, especially where money is concerned, that a moral condemnation of great wealth must inform any defense of the free market, and that moral condemnation must be backed up with effective political action.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“In the nineteenth century wealthy families were typically settled, often for several generations, in a given locale. In a nation of wanderers their stability of residence provided a certain continuity. Old families were recognizable as such, especially in the older seaboard cities, only because, resisting the migratory habit, they put down roots. Their insistence on the sanctity of private property was qualified by the principle that property rights were neither absolute nor unconditional. Wealth was understood to carry civic obligations. Libraries, museums, parks, orchestras, universities, hospitals, and other civic amenities stood as so many monuments to upper-class munificence.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Having given up the effort to raise the general level of competence—the old meaning of democracy—we are content to institutionalize competence in the caring class, which arrogates to itself the job of looking out for everybody else. Populism, as I understand it, is unambiguously committed to the”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“What does it profit the residents of the South Bronx to enforce speech codes at elite universities?”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Those wonderful machines that science has enabled us to construct have not eliminated drudgery, as Oscar Wilde and other false prophets so confidently predicted, but they have made it possible to imagine ourselves as masters of our fate. In an age that fancies itself as disillusioned, this is the one illusion—the illusion of mastery—that remains as tenacious as ever. But now that we are beginning to grasp the limits of our control over the natural world, it is an illusion—to invoke Freud once again—the future of which is very much in doubt, an illusion more problematical, certainly, than the future of religion.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“If the whole world now seems to be going through a dark night of the soul, it is because the normal rebellion against dependence appears to be sanctioned by our scientific control over nature, the same progress of science that has allegedly destroyed religious superstition.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Nostalgia is superficially loving in its re-creation of the past, but it evokes the past only to bury it alive. It shares with the belief in progress, to which it is only superficially opposed, an eagerness to proclaim the death of the past and to deny history’s hold on the present. Those who mourn the death of the past and those who acclaim it both take for granted that our age has outgrown its childhood. Both find it difficult to believe that history still haunts our enlightened, disillusioned adolescence or maturity or senility (whatever stage of the life cycle we have allegedly reached). Both are governed, in their attitude toward the past, by the prevailing disbelief in ghosts.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Unenlightened ages past might be forgiven for believing things no educated person could believe in the twentieth century or for taking literally mythologies better understood in a figurative or metaphorical sense; one might even forgive the modern proletarian, excluded from an education by virtue of his unremitting toil, but the bourgeois philistine lived in an enlightened age, with easy access to enlightened culture, yet deliberately chose not to see the light, lest it destroy the illusions essential to his peace of mind. The intellectual alone, in any case, looked straight into the light without blinking.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“The unexamined premise that history can be compared with the individual’s growth from childhood to maturity—the point of reference that Jung shared with Freud and Weber, indeed with most of those who speculate about such issues—made it possible to condemn any form of cultural conservatism, any respect for tradition, as an expression of the natural tendency to resist emotional and intellectual growth, to cling instead to the security of childhood. “Only the man who has outgrown the stages of consciousness belonging to the past … can achieve a full consciousness of the present.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“Oldenburg argues that it was a new and “basically flawed” ideal of marital intimacy, not the women’s movement, that undermined single-sex sociability. Like the shopping mall, marital “togetherness” was an essentially suburban invention, which led people to seek all their emotional satisfactions in private, leaving the public square to the single-minded pursuit of profitable exchange. Although Oldenburg minimizes women’s longstanding opposition to all-male sociability, I think he is right in linking this opposition to an ideal of intimacy that loaded marriage (as many other observers have noted) with more emotional weight than it could bear.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy