7 ms·

The Late, Great American WASP

57 points by grellas 13y ago

mcantelon 13y ago
WASPs idealized virtue, which to some extent promoted it within their culture, but there was certainly corruption. Allan Dulles is named in the article, for example. He literally used his power to foment wars in other countries to advance his personal interests. And corruption allegations against the Bush family are voluminous. I think a big difference in the perspective of today's elite is due to globalization and technological advances. The population of the US was valuable in the past because outsourcing wasn't feasible and war was less mechanized. Now the population, judging by the federal government's development of counter-insurgence measures over the past decade, seems to be regarded more as a threat than an asset.
bsirkia 13y ago
Is it just me or is there kind of too much going on in this essay? It moves pretty quickly from a history of famous WASP writers and presidents, why WASPs dominated, to how WASP dominance declined, how America is now a meritocracy, that meritocracy is built on overeducation, it isn't as good as WASP-ocracy, and something to do a with "greedy pigs" that are overeducated.
- pstuart 13y ago
  No, it was not just you. It was poorly written and poorly thought out.
- reader5000 13y ago
  He's just observing the putative pros/cons of having a society ran by a hereditary elite, versus by the spazzes that got all the best grades in school. He doesn't clearly prefer one over the other, but laments the erosion of the good parts of the old regime.
  - bsirkia 13y ago
    That's a great summary.
pstuart 13y ago
I say this as a WAS (no, P, thank you very much). Cry me a freaking river. Not included here was the WASPs he worshipped were all men. And this strawman bullshit about nobility of WASP character and how "meritocrats" are hypocrites shows that the author is one of the "old breed" that needs to die off as soon as possible.
- apsec112 13y ago
  "An ad hominem attack is not quite as weak as mere name-calling. It might actually carry some weight. For example, if a senator wrote an article saying senators' salaries should be increased, one could respond: Of course he would say that. He's a senator. This wouldn't refute the author's argument, but it may at least be relevant to the case. It's still a very weak form of disagreement, though. If there's something wrong with the senator's argument, you should say what it is; and if there isn't, what difference does it make that he's a senator?" http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
  - pstuart 13y ago
    Huh? What ad hominem did I apply? That he's got an old-school mentality that worships the good old days without acknowledging the negative parts? It was kind of funny having such worship of WASPs come from a jew. Whatever. No point in wasting any more time or effort over this.
jpttsn 13y ago
> The old U.S. ruling class had plenty of problems. But are we really better off with a country run by the self-involved, over-schooled products of modern meritocracy? Being vague is sorta almost as fun as doing this other thing. I think social criticism today relies too much on arguments made between lines to be effective.
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joelgrus 13y ago
Buried in the paragraphs of treacle is an important point about supposed "meritocracy": "Having been a good student, no matter how good the reputation of the school—and most of the good schools, we are coming to learn, are good chiefly in reputation—is no indication of one's quality or promise as a leader. A good student might even be more than a bit of a follower, a conformist, standing ready to give satisfaction to the powers that be so that one can proceed to the next good school, taking another step up the ladder of meritocracy." I don't think it's necessary to wax nostalgic about the heyday of WASPism to recognize this, though.
selimthegrim 13y ago
Stewart Alsop called, he wants his book draft back. http://www.amazon.com/Stay-Execution-Memoir-Stewart-Alsop/dp/039700897X/ref=la_B001H6KRLS_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387659063&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Stay-Execution-Memoir-Stewart-Alsop/dp... NB for relevance: In the late 60s, Alsop (the brother of Joseph in the article) would use his Newsweek column to rant about the lack of WASPs in the CIA and State Dept. making us lose the Vietnam War.
- selimthegrim 13y ago
  In fact, a play about Joseph Alsop's life and this milieu the OP speaks of was on Broadway not so long ago starring John Lithgow as Alsop. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/theater/the-columnist-dissects-joseph-alsop.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/theater/the-columnist-diss... http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/07/the_columnist_broadway.php http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/07/the_colum...
parennoob 13y ago
I hate the treacly, overly politically correct world of today, but these WASPs of the past that the chap in the article is lamenting so much were pure, unabashed racists. For this reason alone, I'm bloody glad they're not in power. "The last unashamed WASP to live in the White House was Franklin Delano Roosevelt" Yeah, a shameless person who refused to meet black athletes, including Jesse Owens after the '36 Olympics (even Mr. Godwin's Law is rumoured to have shaken hands with Owens), and was responsible for the Sith-sounding Executive Order for internment of Japanese Americans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066). We're much better off without this sort of rubbish in power. Good riddance.
- untilHellbanned 13y ago
  I'll take not shaking Jesse Owens hand and harsh treatment of Japanese over what could be our world today...Nazis, Communism. Cmon.
  - rtpg 13y ago
    how about neither? It's possible to not be a racist and still lead a country, especially a country built on the backs of immigrants.
    - untilHellbanned 13y ago
      see zeteo's comment above
    - omonra 13y ago
      No, it's not possible. To lead a country one has to be elected - hence his public position must reflect core beliefs of the majority of the electorate.
      - saraid216 13y ago
        Not actually true. People usually vote for the candidate who more closely reflects themselves, yes, but the fact that that candidate got up and got nominated already puts them a world of difference away from the "majority of the electorate". One of the core beliefs of this electorate, after all, is that politicians are liars.
ddebernardy 13y ago
The first paragrap suggests that the US currently is a meritocracy; whereas in the past few years, I've had the impression it was a kleptocracy run by bankers. It's probably just my own impression, though. Is there really any kind of meritocracy that goes beyond lip service in the US? (Or anywhere else, for that matter, since there was no such thing in any country I've lived in.)
- alexgartrell 13y ago
  It's a meritocracy because anyone can grow up to be a banker. Edit: not 100% sure why this Got down voted but I was being serious. Meritocracy fits as long as the basis of assignment is merit. Just because the system is broken doesn't mean it's not a meritocracy.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    Not the kind of banker that makes up the aforementioned kleptocracy. I mean, we're talking about high-powered investment bankers. Those come almost exclusively from Ivy League schools, and it's definitely not the case that just about anyone can get into them.
- edias 13y ago
  >I've had the impression it was a kleptocracy run by bankers. Is this really the view that foreigners have the how the states is run? We actually rank among the least corrupt nations in the world depending on if you trust Transparency International or not. I guess you could say it's legalized corruption through lobbying and political donations, which I agree with to some extent, but even than it wouldn't be bankers. Pharmaceuticals top that list with room to spare, where as "Securities and Investments" don't even make top 5. Lawyers are really the people who run America and anyone who has any sort of political ambitions will get a law degree, not become a banker. Obviously the Citizens United case (the one that allows Corporations to donate) was fucked, but it's not like 20+ years ago everything was fine either. I really think this is just a result of HN/reddit having such a young demographic, no one remembers how bad things used to be as well. Iran Contra? MK Ultra? The FBI under Hoover? Police assaulting union workers because why the fuck not? Rampant political corruption by organized crime in the 20s/30s? You know the phrase "I wan't America to be the way I grew up in"? It's not because America was different, it's because you were a kid and didn't see any of it.
zaraflan 13y ago
It's astounding that an article like this is published in 2013 anywhere but the dark corners of supremacist sites and the memoirs of fading British lords, where it belongs. This is nothing more than moaning that the modern predominantly-white, predominantly-male, virtually entirely rich elite are too "new money" for the old predominantly-white, predominantly-male, virtually entirely rich elite.
- amerika_blog 13y ago
  Either that, or there's a sea change coming.
- untilHellbanned 13y ago
  hyperbole much? See reader5000's comment below for a fairer assessment.
wil421 13y ago
Thank god. I'd rather live in a world that represents everyone than to have a ruling class consisting of a single type.
amerika_blog 13y ago
I found David Brooks' book "Bobos" to be very informative about our new elites. http://www.amerika.org/books/bobos-in-paradise-the-new-upper-class-and-how-they-got-there-by-david-brooks/ http://www.amerika.org/books/bobos-in-paradise-the-new-upper...
D9u 13y ago
Meritocracy? What a load of garbage! http://www.ncsociology.org/sociationtoday/v21/merit.htm "According to the ideology of the American Dream, America is the land of limitless opportunity in which individuals can go as far as their own merit takes them. According to this ideology, you get out of the system what you put into it. Getting ahead is ostensibly based on individual merit, which is generally viewed as a combination of factors including innate abilities, working hard, having the right attitude, and having high moral character and integrity. Americans not only tend to think that is how the system should work, but most Americans also think that is how the system does work (Huber and Form 1973, Kluegel and Smith 1986, Ladd 1994). In our book The Meritocracy Myth (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), we challenge the validity of these commonly held assertions, by arguing that there is a gap between how people think the system works and how the system actually does work. We refer to this gap as “the meritocracy myth,” or the myth that the system distributes resources—especially wealth and income—according to the merit of individuals. We challenge this assertion in two ways. First, we suggest that while merit does indeed affect who ends up with what, the impact of merit on economic outcomes is vastly overestimated by the ideology of the American Dream. Second, we identify a variety of nonmerit factors that suppress, neutralize, or even negate the effects of merit and create barriers to individual mobility. We summarize these arguments below. First, however, we take a brief look at what is at stake. That is, what is up for grabs in the race to get ahead?" http://www.law.umn.edu/lawreview/v85n2.htm http://www.law.umn.edu/lawreview/v85n2.htm
- selimthegrim 13y ago
  http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment - the coiner of the word weighs in
- sbierwagen 13y ago
  Might want to invest in some linebreaks. (fold --spaces --width 60) According to the ideology of the American Dream, America is the land of limitless opportunity in which individuals can go as far as their own merit takes them. According to this ideology, you get out of the system what you put into it. Getting ahead is ostensibly based on individual merit, which is generally viewed as a combination of factors including innate abilities, working hard, having the right attitude, and having high moral character and integrity. Americans not only tend to think that is how the system should work, but most Americans also think that is how the system does work (Huber and Form 1973, Kluegel and Smith 1986, Ladd 1994). In our book The Meritocracy Myth (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), we challenge the validity of these commonly held assertions, by arguing that there is a gap between how people think the system works and how the system actually does work. We refer to this gap as “the meritocracy myth,” or the myth that the system distributes resources—especially wealth and income—according to the merit of individuals. We challenge this assertion in two ways. First, we suggest that while merit does indeed affect who ends up with what, the impact of merit on economic outcomes is vastly overestimated by the ideology of the American Dream. Second, we identify a variety of nonmerit factors that suppress, neutralize, or even negate the effects of merit and create barriers to individual mobility. We summarize these arguments below. First, however, we take a brief look at what is at stake. That is, what is up for grabs in the race to get ahead?
clarkm 13y ago
I think the best example of this shift can be found in the Supreme Court: not a single justice is a WASP, but they all have degrees from Harvard or Yale.
Zigurd 13y ago
> The WASPs' day is done. Such leadership as it provided isn't likely to be revived. Recalling it at its best is a reminder that the meritocracy that has followed it marks something less than clear progress. Rather the reverse. Wow. Obama has been disappointing but he hasn't come close to the damage Dubya did. Dubya really was a drunk dimbulb, and his name got him into Harvard Business School. Heck of a dividend we got from that anti-meritocratic inbred WASP-favoring move there. Let's try a really meritorious president next time. And just above the words "Trust, honor, and character" I see John and Allen Dulles. Seriously? I wish I could call the author of this piece uninformed but I think it's worse than that.
mynameishere 13y ago
If anyone is baffled by why this article exists, go to your favorite search engine and type "the new wasps", including the quotes. The target audience doesn't need to do that, but you might. I find it odd that it was posted here though.
- rtpg 13y ago
  maybe it's a good reality check to realize that society has not moved on as far as we might hope. Or maybe the WSJ's editorial board hasn't. There's a disconnect somewhere.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    In the last few months, I've been noticing that every major political issue throughout the entire history of America ties strongly into the Civil War, either as a prelude or as an effect. I'm not a historian, though, and I'm worried I have a golden hammer, but... When I was in high school, I looked around at my school and saw how diverse it was and said to a friend online I'd never met that racism was dead. She told me that, when she was a child, a burning cross had been thrown into her yard. That would have been ~1980. I don't think society has really moved on at all. I think a lot of us were simply distracted for a while, and deluded by the brevity and light treatment given in schools.
rtpg 13y ago
His argument is that WASPs were men of "character"? What a load of tripe. I honestly cannot believe this is being published in the WSJ, an article wanting for a return to hereditary rule (not that it's gone far from that, but still). Awful, awful things. I, for one , look forward to the last time that people try to use a "standards" argument in deciding things. An interview with the Prime Minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S2NKlMW0vc#t=1059 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S2NKlMW0vc#t=1059 "All that we say is lets have some standards, in decency , in behavior , and in civilisation" , this is the argument to justify not giving 95% of the population franchise in elections. The more I hear people talk, the more I feel that "moral standards" and "decency" are arguments that are only used to enforce some existing (usually racist) plutocracy.
- saraid216 13y ago
  > I honestly cannot believe this is being published in the WSJ This isn't really a surprise coming from the WSJ... Here, this will make you lose more faith in humanity. http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/
beachstartup 13y ago
asking if america is better off without the ruling wasp class is like asking if the world is better off without the british empire. the arguments for, and against, are practically identical.
virtualwhys 13y ago
I thought everyone was upper class, is it just me? God I love these fucking piles of cash -- James Chalmers Lang III p.s. name made up, I have 4 20s on my desk.
michaelochurch 13y ago
The WASP elite was, relative to most elites that human history has graced our species with, a very decent one. (Was there racism and corruption? Of course. But they aspired to decency, a trait not seen in the current elite, and not seen in most elites. I'm not calling them good in absolute terms, but in relative terms.) So, in the middle of the 20th century, they did an unusually decent (and unusual) thing. They accepted their own decline. For one example, they invented the SAT, whose initial result was to increase the number of Jewish students admitted to Ivy League universities by about an order of magnitude. (Then there was a racist backlash, which is where we get all that extracurricular bullshit in US college admissions. Elites are not monolithic.) Why'd they accept their own decline? I think they were self-aware enough (again, as a group) to recognize that there was no choice. Without letting FDR save capitalism via the New Deal, the U.S. would have fallen into economic collapse and political chaos, and not been able to fight the two-front (cultural, and then actual) wars against fascism and communism. The stakes were existential. When facing a choice between the risk of obliteration (but also the assurance that, if there was a country left, they'd rule it) and gentle decline (to merely quite rich, but not a ruling class) they took the right path. Very few elites do. Most let their countries burn. What happened next is not a meritocratic invasion. The global elite (which is much more anti-democratic) stepped in. That's been bad for all of us. The WASPs care enough about the country not to destroy it. The global elite is not tied to any one nation, and doesn't care. Upper-middle-class "meritocrats" are not the ruling class, and the people in charge have more in common with Russian oligarchs and Arab oil sheikhs than with either (a) the somewhat callous but stately and pro-democratic (or at least republican, with no reference to the political party/megachurch) WASPs or (b) the well-educated technology adepts who top out in the upper-middle-class. In the US, the current elite tend to look like WASPs because, in fact, many are ethnically WASPs, but their ideology comes from a dirtier source: a global elite whose values come mostly from places where political corruption is just another perk of being rich, where democracy is ridiculed, and where the poor are held in open contempt (and exploited, and often shut down violently) by the rich.
001sky 13y ago
A financier I know who grew up under the WASP standard not long ago told me that he thought that the subprime real estate collapse and the continuing hedge-fund scandals have been brought on directly by men and women who are little more than "greedy pigs" (his words) without a shred of character or concern for their clients or country. Naturally, he added, they all have master's degrees from the putatively best business schools in the nation.
- ddebernardy 13y ago
  As Bill Black says: the best way to rob a bank is to own one. (He even wrote a book titled like that.)
  - 001sky 13y ago
    Sames is true of any business, or any "non-profit". The more unethical you are, the easier it is...
cowpig 13y ago
Once upon a time, racist white upper-class men ruled the United States honorably and without corruption, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest president... I wish the author provided some examples or evidence to support his rather outrageous claims.
- cglace 13y ago
  He said strongest president not best. Simply look at the 1980 electoral map. . .
mcguire 13y ago
"What our new meritocrats have failed to evince—and what the older WASP generation prided itself on—is character and the ability to put the well-being of the nation before their own." With regards to the older WASP generation, I would like some independent verification of their character and ability.
donjigweed 13y ago
Another classic from Joseph Epstein. The same guy who wrote, "There is much that my four sons can do in their lives that might cause me anguish, that might outrage me, that might make [me] ashamed of them and of myself as their father. But nothing they could ever do would make me sadder than if any of them were to become homosexual."
quanticle 13y ago
With articles like this, is it any surprise that the Republican Party is having trouble relating to a diversifying, increasingly immigrant America? When one of its institutional mouthpieces is publishing articles that celebrate eras in which the majority of modern America would have been excluded from the levers of power, is it any surprise that the American public is choosing to reject the Republican party instead of rolling over and handing back rights that were hard won during the twentieth century? I mean, let's look back at the era in which WASPs ruled American political life. They heyday of the WASP was basically from the end of reconstruction through the beginning of the Great Depression. These were great years... if you were a WASP. If you weren't, they were years of rising income inequality, rising racism, rising anti-immigrant sentiment and rising corporate power. Sure, TR, and later, FDR, went some way in ameliorating the worst excesses of WASP power, but they were viewed as class traitors by their fellow WASPs. These were years where, like today, the rich got richer, and everybody else got screwed. As a proud member of Everybody Else, I'm glad that WASP power has been irrevocably broken. I do not want to go back to an era in which I am excluded from the most desirable positions in society simply because I am of the wrong race, religion or gender.
cafard 13y ago
Remarkably stupid. Did Joe or even John Kennedy philander more than J.P. Morgan? Has anyone in a hedge fund today the imagination to dream up the schemes of Collis Huntington or the first Harriman? Did John D. Rockefeller win a name for honest dealing? And (as that proto-wasp Henry Adams pointed out) some things can be more harmful than simple corruption. It would be hard to find anyone now who thinks that John Foster Dulles's influence was anything but harmful. And how about Robert McNamara (whose name looks might Irish, by the way)?
elohesra 13y ago
You keep using that word 'meritocracy', I do not think it means what you think it means. It seems the author, Joseph Epstein, picked up on the idea that using privileged education as a proxy for merit is probably a bad idea, yet why he feels that this vindicates WASPishness is beyond me. It wasn't even particularly clear why WASPishness was included in the article at all, since it seemed only to serve as a mildly interesting biographical backdrop on an argument that centered around evaluating the worth of university. Frankly, the article seemed like it had no clear direction. It banged on about meritocracy throughout, and used ivy-league universities as some sort of prima facie proxy for merit, yet it seemed to tiptoe around the crux of the argument: ivy-league universities are the new WASP. Yet rather than make this point outright, and show that attending an ivy-league school is no more an indicator for merit than was WASP birthright, the writer spent the majority of the article romantically eulogizing the old-school WASP. Frankly it all seemed a little tenuously connected. That said, its strongest point -- on which it spent the least time -- was the argument that privileged education does not prove anything of one's abilities. This is certainly true in my experience, yet this undermines the article's claim that a meritocracy would choose someone with a privileged education. If a meritocracy is marking irrelevant traits as indicators of merit, then all that shows is that the meritocracy is incorrectly assigning merit, rather than showing that the concept of meritocracies themselves are flawed. Maybe it's only in the tech community that quality of output is seen as a better proxy for merit than educational background, but here at least I don't believe I've seen much weight attributed to education. When given the choice between two candidates, one of whom having attended MIT and the other of whom having written some fantastic systems, it's been my experience that it is the latter candidate who would be more desired by tech companies. In a meritocracy where one's output alone is judged, that seems to me to be a fair system, because -- unless the output is intrinsically tied to some unfair advantage -- it seems that it cannot be gamed through class, gender or race. I felt that the author failed to consider such a meritocracy, and instead -- to his discredit -- just assumed 'merit' and 'ivy-league' are synonymous without arguing to prove such a point. Why any of you should care what I thought of this essay is another point entirely...

57 points by grellas 13y ago

WASPs idealized virtue, which to some extent promoted it within their culture, but there was certainly corruption. Allan Dulles is named in the article, for example. He literally used his power to foment wars in other countries to advance his personal interests. And corruption allegations against the Bush family are voluminous. I think a big difference in the perspective of today's elite is due to globalization and technological advances. The population of the US was valuable in the past because outsourcing wasn't feasible and war was less mechanized. Now the population, judging by the federal government's development of counter-insurgence measures over the past decade, seems to be regarded more as a threat than an asset.

bsirkia 13y ago

Is it just me or is there kind of too much going on in this essay? It moves pretty quickly from a history of famous WASP writers and presidents, why WASPs dominated, to how WASP dominance declined, how America is now a meritocracy, that meritocracy is built on overeducation, it isn't as good as WASP-ocracy, and something to do a with "greedy pigs" that are overeducated.

pstuart 13y ago
No, it was not just you. It was poorly written and poorly thought out.
reader5000 13y ago
He's just observing the putative pros/cons of having a society ran by a hereditary elite, versus by the spazzes that got all the best grades in school. He doesn't clearly prefer one over the other, but laments the erosion of the good parts of the old regime.
- bsirkia 13y ago
  That's a great summary.

pstuart 13y ago

I say this as a WAS (no, P, thank you very much). Cry me a freaking river. Not included here was the WASPs he worshipped were all men. And this strawman bullshit about nobility of WASP character and how "meritocrats" are hypocrites shows that the author is one of the "old breed" that needs to die off as soon as possible.

apsec112 13y ago
"An ad hominem attack is not quite as weak as mere name-calling. It might actually carry some weight. For example, if a senator wrote an article saying senators' salaries should be increased, one could respond: Of course he would say that. He's a senator. This wouldn't refute the author's argument, but it may at least be relevant to the case. It's still a very weak form of disagreement, though. If there's something wrong with the senator's argument, you should say what it is; and if there isn't, what difference does it make that he's a senator?" http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
- pstuart 13y ago
  Huh? What ad hominem did I apply? That he's got an old-school mentality that worships the good old days without acknowledging the negative parts? It was kind of funny having such worship of WASPs come from a jew. Whatever. No point in wasting any more time or effort over this.

jpttsn 13y ago

> The old U.S. ruling class had plenty of problems. But are we really better off with a country run by the self-involved, over-schooled products of modern meritocracy? Being vague is sorta almost as fun as doing this other thing. I think social criticism today relies too much on arguments made between lines to be effective.

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joelgrus 13y ago

Buried in the paragraphs of treacle is an important point about supposed "meritocracy": "Having been a good student, no matter how good the reputation of the school—and most of the good schools, we are coming to learn, are good chiefly in reputation—is no indication of one's quality or promise as a leader. A good student might even be more than a bit of a follower, a conformist, standing ready to give satisfaction to the powers that be so that one can proceed to the next good school, taking another step up the ladder of meritocracy." I don't think it's necessary to wax nostalgic about the heyday of WASPism to recognize this, though.

selimthegrim 13y ago

Stewart Alsop called, he wants his book draft back. http://www.amazon.com/Stay-Execution-Memoir-Stewart-Alsop/dp/039700897X/ref=la_B001H6KRLS_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387659063&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Stay-Execution-Memoir-Stewart-Alsop/dp... NB for relevance: In the late 60s, Alsop (the brother of Joseph in the article) would use his Newsweek column to rant about the lack of WASPs in the CIA and State Dept. making us lose the Vietnam War.

selimthegrim 13y ago
In fact, a play about Joseph Alsop's life and this milieu the OP speaks of was on Broadway not so long ago starring John Lithgow as Alsop. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/theater/the-columnist-dissects-joseph-alsop.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/theater/the-columnist-diss... http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/07/the_columnist_broadway.php http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/07/the_colum...

parennoob 13y ago

I hate the treacly, overly politically correct world of today, but these WASPs of the past that the chap in the article is lamenting so much were pure, unabashed racists. For this reason alone, I'm bloody glad they're not in power. "The last unashamed WASP to live in the White House was Franklin Delano Roosevelt" Yeah, a shameless person who refused to meet black athletes, including Jesse Owens after the '36 Olympics (even Mr. Godwin's Law is rumoured to have shaken hands with Owens), and was responsible for the Sith-sounding Executive Order for internment of Japanese Americans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066). We're much better off without this sort of rubbish in power. Good riddance.

untilHellbanned 13y ago
I'll take not shaking Jesse Owens hand and harsh treatment of Japanese over what could be our world today...Nazis, Communism. Cmon.
- rtpg 13y ago
  how about neither? It's possible to not be a racist and still lead a country, especially a country built on the backs of immigrants.
  - untilHellbanned 13y ago
    see zeteo's comment above
  - omonra 13y ago
    No, it's not possible. To lead a country one has to be elected - hence his public position must reflect core beliefs of the majority of the electorate.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      Not actually true. People usually vote for the candidate who more closely reflects themselves, yes, but the fact that that candidate got up and got nominated already puts them a world of difference away from the "majority of the electorate". One of the core beliefs of this electorate, after all, is that politicians are liars.

ddebernardy 13y ago

The first paragrap suggests that the US currently is a meritocracy; whereas in the past few years, I've had the impression it was a kleptocracy run by bankers. It's probably just my own impression, though. Is there really any kind of meritocracy that goes beyond lip service in the US? (Or anywhere else, for that matter, since there was no such thing in any country I've lived in.)

alexgartrell 13y ago
It's a meritocracy because anyone can grow up to be a banker. Edit: not 100% sure why this Got down voted but I was being serious. Meritocracy fits as long as the basis of assignment is merit. Just because the system is broken doesn't mean it's not a meritocracy.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  Not the kind of banker that makes up the aforementioned kleptocracy. I mean, we're talking about high-powered investment bankers. Those come almost exclusively from Ivy League schools, and it's definitely not the case that just about anyone can get into them.
edias 13y ago
>I've had the impression it was a kleptocracy run by bankers. Is this really the view that foreigners have the how the states is run? We actually rank among the least corrupt nations in the world depending on if you trust Transparency International or not. I guess you could say it's legalized corruption through lobbying and political donations, which I agree with to some extent, but even than it wouldn't be bankers. Pharmaceuticals top that list with room to spare, where as "Securities and Investments" don't even make top 5. Lawyers are really the people who run America and anyone who has any sort of political ambitions will get a law degree, not become a banker. Obviously the Citizens United case (the one that allows Corporations to donate) was fucked, but it's not like 20+ years ago everything was fine either. I really think this is just a result of HN/reddit having such a young demographic, no one remembers how bad things used to be as well. Iran Contra? MK Ultra? The FBI under Hoover? Police assaulting union workers because why the fuck not? Rampant political corruption by organized crime in the 20s/30s? You know the phrase "I wan't America to be the way I grew up in"? It's not because America was different, it's because you were a kid and didn't see any of it.

zaraflan 13y ago

It's astounding that an article like this is published in 2013 anywhere but the dark corners of supremacist sites and the memoirs of fading British lords, where it belongs. This is nothing more than moaning that the modern predominantly-white, predominantly-male, virtually entirely rich elite are too "new money" for the old predominantly-white, predominantly-male, virtually entirely rich elite.

amerika_blog 13y ago
Either that, or there's a sea change coming.
untilHellbanned 13y ago
hyperbole much? See reader5000's comment below for a fairer assessment.

wil421 13y ago

Thank god. I'd rather live in a world that represents everyone than to have a ruling class consisting of a single type.

amerika_blog 13y ago

I found David Brooks' book "Bobos" to be very informative about our new elites. http://www.amerika.org/books/bobos-in-paradise-the-new-upper-class-and-how-they-got-there-by-david-brooks/ http://www.amerika.org/books/bobos-in-paradise-the-new-upper...

D9u 13y ago

Meritocracy? What a load of garbage! http://www.ncsociology.org/sociationtoday/v21/merit.htm "According to the ideology of the American Dream, America is the land of limitless opportunity in which individuals can go as far as their own merit takes them. According to this ideology, you get out of the system what you put into it. Getting ahead is ostensibly based on individual merit, which is generally viewed as a combination of factors including innate abilities, working hard, having the right attitude, and having high moral character and integrity. Americans not only tend to think that is how the system should work, but most Americans also think that is how the system does work (Huber and Form 1973, Kluegel and Smith 1986, Ladd 1994). In our book The Meritocracy Myth (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), we challenge the validity of these commonly held assertions, by arguing that there is a gap between how people think the system works and how the system actually does work. We refer to this gap as “the meritocracy myth,” or the myth that the system distributes resources—especially wealth and income—according to the merit of individuals. We challenge this assertion in two ways. First, we suggest that while merit does indeed affect who ends up with what, the impact of merit on economic outcomes is vastly overestimated by the ideology of the American Dream. Second, we identify a variety of nonmerit factors that suppress, neutralize, or even negate the effects of merit and create barriers to individual mobility. We summarize these arguments below. First, however, we take a brief look at what is at stake. That is, what is up for grabs in the race to get ahead?" http://www.law.umn.edu/lawreview/v85n2.htm http://www.law.umn.edu/lawreview/v85n2.htm

selimthegrim 13y ago
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment - the coiner of the word weighs in
sbierwagen 13y ago
Might want to invest in some linebreaks. (fold --spaces --width 60) According to the ideology of the American Dream, America is the land of limitless opportunity in which individuals can go as far as their own merit takes them. According to this ideology, you get out of the system what you put into it. Getting ahead is ostensibly based on individual merit, which is generally viewed as a combination of factors including innate abilities, working hard, having the right attitude, and having high moral character and integrity. Americans not only tend to think that is how the system should work, but most Americans also think that is how the system does work (Huber and Form 1973, Kluegel and Smith 1986, Ladd 1994). In our book The Meritocracy Myth (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), we challenge the validity of these commonly held assertions, by arguing that there is a gap between how people think the system works and how the system actually does work. We refer to this gap as “the meritocracy myth,” or the myth that the system distributes resources—especially wealth and income—according to the merit of individuals. We challenge this assertion in two ways. First, we suggest that while merit does indeed affect who ends up with what, the impact of merit on economic outcomes is vastly overestimated by the ideology of the American Dream. Second, we identify a variety of nonmerit factors that suppress, neutralize, or even negate the effects of merit and create barriers to individual mobility. We summarize these arguments below. First, however, we take a brief look at what is at stake. That is, what is up for grabs in the race to get ahead?

clarkm 13y ago

I think the best example of this shift can be found in the Supreme Court: not a single justice is a WASP, but they all have degrees from Harvard or Yale.

Zigurd 13y ago

> The WASPs' day is done. Such leadership as it provided isn't likely to be revived. Recalling it at its best is a reminder that the meritocracy that has followed it marks something less than clear progress. Rather the reverse. Wow. Obama has been disappointing but he hasn't come close to the damage Dubya did. Dubya really was a drunk dimbulb, and his name got him into Harvard Business School. Heck of a dividend we got from that anti-meritocratic inbred WASP-favoring move there. Let's try a really meritorious president next time. And just above the words "Trust, honor, and character" I see John and Allen Dulles. Seriously? I wish I could call the author of this piece uninformed but I think it's worse than that.

mynameishere 13y ago

If anyone is baffled by why this article exists, go to your favorite search engine and type "the new wasps", including the quotes. The target audience doesn't need to do that, but you might. I find it odd that it was posted here though.

rtpg 13y ago
maybe it's a good reality check to realize that society has not moved on as far as we might hope. Or maybe the WSJ's editorial board hasn't. There's a disconnect somewhere.
- saraid216 13y ago
  In the last few months, I've been noticing that every major political issue throughout the entire history of America ties strongly into the Civil War, either as a prelude or as an effect. I'm not a historian, though, and I'm worried I have a golden hammer, but... When I was in high school, I looked around at my school and saw how diverse it was and said to a friend online I'd never met that racism was dead. She told me that, when she was a child, a burning cross had been thrown into her yard. That would have been ~1980. I don't think society has really moved on at all. I think a lot of us were simply distracted for a while, and deluded by the brevity and light treatment given in schools.

rtpg 13y ago

His argument is that WASPs were men of "character"? What a load of tripe. I honestly cannot believe this is being published in the WSJ, an article wanting for a return to hereditary rule (not that it's gone far from that, but still). Awful, awful things. I, for one , look forward to the last time that people try to use a "standards" argument in deciding things. An interview with the Prime Minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S2NKlMW0vc#t=1059 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S2NKlMW0vc#t=1059 "All that we say is lets have some standards, in decency , in behavior , and in civilisation" , this is the argument to justify not giving 95% of the population franchise in elections. The more I hear people talk, the more I feel that "moral standards" and "decency" are arguments that are only used to enforce some existing (usually racist) plutocracy.

saraid216 13y ago
> I honestly cannot believe this is being published in the WSJ This isn't really a surprise coming from the WSJ... Here, this will make you lose more faith in humanity. http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/

beachstartup 13y ago

asking if america is better off without the ruling wasp class is like asking if the world is better off without the british empire. the arguments for, and against, are practically identical.

virtualwhys 13y ago

I thought everyone was upper class, is it just me? God I love these fucking piles of cash -- James Chalmers Lang III p.s. name made up, I have 4 20s on my desk.

michaelochurch 13y ago

The WASP elite was, relative to most elites that human history has graced our species with, a very decent one. (Was there racism and corruption? Of course. But they aspired to decency, a trait not seen in the current elite, and not seen in most elites. I'm not calling them good in absolute terms, but in relative terms.) So, in the middle of the 20th century, they did an unusually decent (and unusual) thing. They accepted their own decline. For one example, they invented the SAT, whose initial result was to increase the number of Jewish students admitted to Ivy League universities by about an order of magnitude. (Then there was a racist backlash, which is where we get all that extracurricular bullshit in US college admissions. Elites are not monolithic.) Why'd they accept their own decline? I think they were self-aware enough (again, as a group) to recognize that there was no choice. Without letting FDR save capitalism via the New Deal, the U.S. would have fallen into economic collapse and political chaos, and not been able to fight the two-front (cultural, and then actual) wars against fascism and communism. The stakes were existential. When facing a choice between the risk of obliteration (but also the assurance that, if there was a country left, they'd rule it) and gentle decline (to merely quite rich, but not a ruling class) they took the right path. Very few elites do. Most let their countries burn. What happened next is not a meritocratic invasion. The global elite (which is much more anti-democratic) stepped in. That's been bad for all of us. The WASPs care enough about the country not to destroy it. The global elite is not tied to any one nation, and doesn't care. Upper-middle-class "meritocrats" are not the ruling class, and the people in charge have more in common with Russian oligarchs and Arab oil sheikhs than with either (a) the somewhat callous but stately and pro-democratic (or at least republican, with no reference to the political party/megachurch) WASPs or (b) the well-educated technology adepts who top out in the upper-middle-class. In the US, the current elite tend to look like WASPs because, in fact, many are ethnically WASPs, but their ideology comes from a dirtier source: a global elite whose values come mostly from places where political corruption is just another perk of being rich, where democracy is ridiculed, and where the poor are held in open contempt (and exploited, and often shut down violently) by the rich.

001sky 13y ago

A financier I know who grew up under the WASP standard not long ago told me that he thought that the subprime real estate collapse and the continuing hedge-fund scandals have been brought on directly by men and women who are little more than "greedy pigs" (his words) without a shred of character or concern for their clients or country. Naturally, he added, they all have master's degrees from the putatively best business schools in the nation.

ddebernardy 13y ago
As Bill Black says: the best way to rob a bank is to own one. (He even wrote a book titled like that.)
- 001sky 13y ago
  Sames is true of any business, or any "non-profit". The more unethical you are, the easier it is...

cowpig 13y ago

Once upon a time, racist white upper-class men ruled the United States honorably and without corruption, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest president... I wish the author provided some examples or evidence to support his rather outrageous claims.

cglace 13y ago
He said strongest president not best. Simply look at the 1980 electoral map. . .

mcguire 13y ago

"What our new meritocrats have failed to evince—and what the older WASP generation prided itself on—is character and the ability to put the well-being of the nation before their own." With regards to the older WASP generation, I would like some independent verification of their character and ability.

donjigweed 13y ago

Another classic from Joseph Epstein. The same guy who wrote, "There is much that my four sons can do in their lives that might cause me anguish, that might outrage me, that might make [me] ashamed of them and of myself as their father. But nothing they could ever do would make me sadder than if any of them were to become homosexual."

quanticle 13y ago

With articles like this, is it any surprise that the Republican Party is having trouble relating to a diversifying, increasingly immigrant America? When one of its institutional mouthpieces is publishing articles that celebrate eras in which the majority of modern America would have been excluded from the levers of power, is it any surprise that the American public is choosing to reject the Republican party instead of rolling over and handing back rights that were hard won during the twentieth century? I mean, let's look back at the era in which WASPs ruled American political life. They heyday of the WASP was basically from the end of reconstruction through the beginning of the Great Depression. These were great years... if you were a WASP. If you weren't, they were years of rising income inequality, rising racism, rising anti-immigrant sentiment and rising corporate power. Sure, TR, and later, FDR, went some way in ameliorating the worst excesses of WASP power, but they were viewed as class traitors by their fellow WASPs. These were years where, like today, the rich got richer, and everybody else got screwed. As a proud member of Everybody Else, I'm glad that WASP power has been irrevocably broken. I do not want to go back to an era in which I am excluded from the most desirable positions in society simply because I am of the wrong race, religion or gender.

cafard 13y ago

Remarkably stupid. Did Joe or even John Kennedy philander more than J.P. Morgan? Has anyone in a hedge fund today the imagination to dream up the schemes of Collis Huntington or the first Harriman? Did John D. Rockefeller win a name for honest dealing? And (as that proto-wasp Henry Adams pointed out) some things can be more harmful than simple corruption. It would be hard to find anyone now who thinks that John Foster Dulles's influence was anything but harmful. And how about Robert McNamara (whose name looks might Irish, by the way)?

elohesra 13y ago

You keep using that word 'meritocracy', I do not think it means what you think it means. It seems the author, Joseph Epstein, picked up on the idea that using privileged education as a proxy for merit is probably a bad idea, yet why he feels that this vindicates WASPishness is beyond me. It wasn't even particularly clear why WASPishness was included in the article at all, since it seemed only to serve as a mildly interesting biographical backdrop on an argument that centered around evaluating the worth of university. Frankly, the article seemed like it had no clear direction. It banged on about meritocracy throughout, and used ivy-league universities as some sort of prima facie proxy for merit, yet it seemed to tiptoe around the crux of the argument: ivy-league universities are the new WASP. Yet rather than make this point outright, and show that attending an ivy-league school is no more an indicator for merit than was WASP birthright, the writer spent the majority of the article romantically eulogizing the old-school WASP. Frankly it all seemed a little tenuously connected. That said, its strongest point -- on which it spent the least time -- was the argument that privileged education does not prove anything of one's abilities. This is certainly true in my experience, yet this undermines the article's claim that a meritocracy would choose someone with a privileged education. If a meritocracy is marking irrelevant traits as indicators of merit, then all that shows is that the meritocracy is incorrectly assigning merit, rather than showing that the concept of meritocracies themselves are flawed. Maybe it's only in the tech community that quality of output is seen as a better proxy for merit than educational background, but here at least I don't believe I've seen much weight attributed to education. When given the choice between two candidates, one of whom having attended MIT and the other of whom having written some fantastic systems, it's been my experience that it is the latter candidate who would be more desired by tech companies. In a meritocracy where one's output alone is judged, that seems to me to be a fair system, because -- unless the output is intrinsically tied to some unfair advantage -- it seems that it cannot be gamed through class, gender or race. I felt that the author failed to consider such a meritocracy, and instead -- to his discredit -- just assumed 'merit' and 'ivy-league' are synonymous without arguing to prove such a point. Why any of you should care what I thought of this essay is another point entirely...