Thursday, December 17, 2009

Resentiment

Interesting post from Julian Sanchez on the resentment and anger so many conservatives feel toward "elites," whoever they are. As he notes, when the Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of congress they still spent the 2004 convention fulminating against "elites." Instead of reveling in their own success, they obsess over "the idea that somewhere, someone who went to Harvard might be snickering at them."

2 comments:

Thomas said...

Someone noticed that the Bush administration hired a huge number of Liberty University law school graduates in the Justice Department. Liberty is Pat Robertson's university.

But when it came to hiring White House counsel, they went almost entirely to the well of the "elites" - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc.

John said...

I find myself ambivalent about the Justice Department lawyer hiring thing. I suspect they probably do hire too many Harvard/Yale/Stanford lawyers, because they are using the credentials of the school instead of really evaluating the candidates. But I would have hoped they would have gone to, say, Texas or Iowa or Georgia or William and Mary, not Liberty.

There are two forces in the country: the establishment and the lunatics.