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Title: In Defense of Elitism by William A. Henry ISBN: 0-385-47943-3 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 August, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 (27 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Articulate and logical. Henry is someone you must consider.
Comment: This book argues that some people are more competent than others and that some cultures are more valuable than others. Henry discusses the manner in which American institutions elevate egalitarianism, derogate elitism, and end up as incubators of mediocrity. He offers seven criteria by which one can identify a superior human culture. In doing so he offers mettlesome arguments against many of the dogmas that afflict the academe and the rest of our society. He offers the idea that people should be judged not on politicized identifiers like gender or race but on merit alone, and he defines, rather plausibly, what "merit" is. Even if you don't agree with Henry, or if you're annoyed with him for speaking up in this manner, you have to admire his precise and unafraid writing. He is someone you must consider.
Rating: 3
Summary: Worthy but incomplete
Comment: The best thing about "In Defense of Elitism" is its bluntness and mostly unapologetic tone (I don't know why Henry feels compelled to trot out his liberal credentials). The greatest flaw of the book is that Henry sorely overlooks a glaring irony: most of the tenets of cultural illiberalism and "identity politics" that he rightly assails were formulated and propagated by the elite. What Henry is really attacking is not egalitarianism but a self-insulated elite that panders to a misguided notion of egalitarianism. It is not the "elite" but the majority of middle-class America that has held most steadfastly to the individualist ethos that Henry praises, and it is only now that the "elite" is beginning to "rediscover" values that they have long dismissed as products of the sexist, racist, ignorant, and philistine masses.
Interestingly, Henry has something in common with the liberal "elite" he despises, which is a contempt for the middle-class aesthetic. He reveals this in the seventh chapter, easily the worst of the book. He includes both sensationalistic news coverage and family photo albums in his indictment of our culture of celebrity (often appropriately called "star-f***ing") without distinguishing between the pernicious and the harmless. His tirade against karaoke is just plain weird--does he object to having fun?
Perhaps Henry's book should have been titled "In Defense of Merit" instead. His main thesis seems to be that people should look up to the successful and seek to emulate them, not destroy them, and that the aristocracy of talent has an obligation to encourage our better angels.
Unfortunately, this laudable reassertion of the individualist/meritocratic ethos is clouded by an authoritarian impulse that is more in line with the traditional notion of nobility rather than a society based on objective rewards and punishments. The problem of elitism is that all too often people appoint themselves as elites and then seek to impose their will on the rest of society like some Niezstchean superman. If you truly believe that you have ideas and values that are superior, the best way to enforce these ideas and values in a manner consistent with a (classical) liberal society is to SET AN EXAMPLE. Instead of sitting back and whining about how the masses are "uncultured" or turning yourself into a social hermit, get out there and DO SOMETHING about it. If your ideas and values are truly the best, the great filtering process of time will serve you and people will come to you. Henry never provides a call to action in a clear and forceful way, and by this failing his book merely adds to the cacophony of complaint.
Rating: 5
Summary: William Henry Argues for a more Elitist Society
Comment: William A. Henry III, with his perfect name for an elitist, argues that the society has gotten too egalitarian wanting equality of results and status for everyone and everything, with no attention being paid to elitist values of striving for excellence, enforcing discipline, and ranking people, things, and ideas according to their merits. Anyone who thinks that society has gotten too egalitarian will be please with this book.
Henry sometimes sounds like a far right winger like David Duke or Dr. William Pierce with his arguments that conquering the frontier civilized this country and with his rebuttal of afro-centrists who claim that blacks invented some basic technologies and once had a high civilization in Egypt. However, the direction of his arguments eventually leads to the liberal ideals of integration, equality of opportunity, and assimilating any individual of any race into this country which has been predominately white for so many years. His idea of America is one in which any individual of any race should swear allegiance to Western ideals which will make them American--a citizenship not based on race.
Problem is, it may be very hard, if not impossible, to enforce Western ideals in a multi-racial society especially if assimilation is not enforced. He seems to make the same mistakes in thinking that libertarians do--that we are just individuals and we are not tied to an ethnic group and its culture.
He calls racists and sexists "creeps", but by identifying himself as elitist, he vaguely realizes that he will also be considered a creep by quasi-marxist egalitarians who have developed the concepts of racism, sexism, and anti-elitism. He has a way of offending the politically incorrect crowd that might agree with him in order to keep his mainstream liberal credentials. (He was a culture critic for Newsweek.)
I think the dubious advantage of an egalitarian society that de-emphasizes excellence is that people can be lazier and not have to work to be the best that they can be. Meanwhile though, we are competing with other cultures that may not be so lazy and egalitarian.
The author may some interesting comments of education. He said that his mother who went to a school in the 40's of average reputation had to read all 37 of Shakespheare's plays in one semester, as opposed to the one a week assigned during a 12 week semester at average colleges today. With the increase of numbers of people going to college, a dilution of the quality of that education has taken place.
Henry questions whether it is a good idea to bankrupt the middle class by finances their childrens' college education if the education does not really advance their career life monetarily. He mentions college grads that are messenger boys on a permanent basis. (I must say that the economy is tough these days--it's harder to find a white collar professional career.)
He talks about how there is a glut of journalism grads, but not enough job slots in the field to give all these grads a job in journalism. He wants an education system that puts more people onto a vocational track and leaves college for the true eggheads of this world.
He deplores the turning away from tracking students according to ability in high schools and including special education students into the class of students of normal intelligence because doing so slows down the rest of the class. This problem stems from egalitarians who hate the elitist idea that it is beneficial sometimes to exclude people that don't qualify to join a certain group.
Henry mentions that our European-derived culture is a mix of egalitarian and elitist ideals. Since World War II egalitarianism has dominated the culture.
I would say that many of us have egalitarian and elitist impulses wanting to exclude others at times as a matter of pride in accomplishment and status, but also not wanting to excluded from any group feeling that we are equal to anyone, even though we aren't. We feel the shame of inferiority when we are excluded.
I don't agree with him that we should have more confidence in the mainstream media as opposed to the alternative one because he asserts that it has higher journalistic standards, although he criticizes mainstream media for not keeping up to those standards.
Elitism probably won't solve any racial dilemmas, if we go back to a system of meritocracy, we will still have an underclass of pre-dominately lesser talented non-whites discontent with the lower pay that lesser talent brings. They are not to blame for being lesser talented, if it is genetically based. That's probably why the egalitarian notion of equality of results is popular; it gives people the illusion that everyone of whatever race is equally talented.
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Title: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter ISBN: 0394703170 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 February, 1966 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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