America Needs Elites … But Not the Kind That We Think

 Intellectual Takeout

 . . . "Above all, they were informed by the moral and political lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They constantly invoked these sources when framing arguments about liberty, virtue, and republican government."  

“I am obliged to confess 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 F. Buckley Jr. once quipped. It was likely a fair judgment when he said it, and if you can still find a phone book, it might even hold today. Still, one may reasonably wonder how much common sense remains among the inhabitants of Boston or Manhattan.

"Yet Buckley’s remark points to something deeper: an enduring American preference for the common man. This instinct animates the MAGA movement and underlies the familiar call to “drain the swamp.” In the Trump era, candidates feel compelled to present themselves as political outsiders, regardless of how educated or well-connected they may be. It is possible, after all, to become so educated that one loses touch with common sense.

"But the more pressing question is whether elites are a problem in themselves or whether our present elites have failed in a distinct and meaningful way. To understand this tension, it is worth returning to the founding fathers, where America’s faith in the common man began.

"The founders established a government of and for the people because they believed ordinary citizens were capable of self-rule. Thomas Jefferson believed that a republic of yeoman farmers – living virtuous, independent lives – offered the surest foundation for liberty and human flourishing. This was a new and controversial idea, not without critics. In response to those who doubted the capacity of farmers to govern, Jefferson noted that American farmers “are the only farmers who can read Homer.” . . . More...

Elijah Newcomb is a graduate of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. He aspires to advance and defend religious liberty in public life.