The Inevitability of Aristocracy and the Purpose of Education image

The Inevitability of Aristocracy and the Purpose of Education

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On a daily basis, I face the grating reminder that not only am I not the best Christian blogger in the world, but I am not even the best Christian blogger in the world called Wilson. (It's partly due to my predilection for phrases like "not only am I not", I imagine).

Here’s the man who is, at his infuriating best:

One of our great modern diseases is the inability to see the big picture. We specialize in our tasks, which Adam Smith described as the source of our wealth. But we also put our heads down and specialize in our thoughts. And this is how it comes about that we can be easily robbed of our birthright by men that I will, for ease of identification, call “bad men.” These are men like Woodrow Wilson, or Immanuel Kant, or John Dewey.
 
We think because the university we went to has different “departments,” where the different “majors” hang out, that these are all different enterprises - like the manufacture of jet engines differs from training horses for future dressage tournaments. But politics and philosophy and education are all part of the same essential project. We will not successfully deal with any one of them without dealing with them all.
 
... Aristocracy is inescapable, and don’t be put off by the word aristocracy. Cream rises, and if a man excels in his work, he will stand before kings. But a pagan and unbelieving aristocracy is characterized by contempt for the people, and pours buckets of scorn over their every attempt to better themselves. Down below the ruling class, they are the booboise, they are at best the middlebrows, they are the suburbanites, who shop in big box stores and listen to music by Carrie Underwood. This contempt that the elite, leftist, power-monkeys consistently feel for anything mass-produced is a contempt born from fear. And this describes the European intellectual attitude toward Americans almost exactly.
 
A Christian aristocracy sees problems when there are problems, sure enough, but does so with affection mixed with love, and love mixed with understanding. One of the things understood is that you can be pleased without being satisfied. A Christian elite wants to be trained in order to govern; a pagan elite wants power in order to be able to rule. And if you are put off with words like elite and aristocracy, you are falling for one of the basic tricks that the pagan elite are fond of using. It is not whether, but which.
 
And this relates to the point of education. Education is all about the instruction in the light of ultimate meaning, and if there isn’t any, what are you going to do? Well, one of the options is to major in groupthink, get your graduate degree in hivebuzz, do some postdoc work at the Sorbonne, and learn how to stroke your chin while lamenting the lack of universal health care in America.

 
He’s right, you know, and in more ways than one.

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