US Aristocracy

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There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents… The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy.
-Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US president, architect, author (1743-1826)

Is There a Ruling Class? by G. William Domhoff (July 17, 1975) Andrew Hacker's non-review of The Bohemian Grove and Other Retreats [NYR, May 1, 1975] has the merit of raising several key issues concerning class and power in the United States even though it does not handle these issues as clearly as it might. Hacker's fuzziness on class and power goes back at least to his 1964 essay in honor of C. Wright Mills, "Power to Do What?" wherein he rejects Mills's tripartite power elite and replaces it with the notion that "the men who run America's large corporations stand at the center of the topmost circle." But he refuses to call this "topmost circle" a ruling class, or part of a ruling class, because members come from "every stratum of the middle class," because "birth and breeding" are of "negligible importance," and because promotions are based more on "talent" than "manners" or "connections." Aside from the fact that birth, breeding, and connections are still more important than Hacker claims, he misses the point that "class affiliation is not a question of social origins," although common social origins are "important to the thinking and cohesiveness of a class." Rather, class has to do with "the position which individuals occupy in society, that is to say, their relations to others, and to society as a whole."

Barack Obama as a Ruling Class Candidate by Paul Street, November 04, 2008 - The predominantly white U.S. business and political establishment still makes sure that nobody who questions dominant domestic and imperial hierarchies and doctrines can make a serious ("viable") run for higher office - the presidency, above all. It does this by denying adequate campaign funding (absolutely essential to success in an age of super-expensive, media-driven campaigns) and favorable media treatment (without which a successful campaign is unimaginable at the current stage of corporate media consolidation and power) to candidates who step beyond the narrow boundaries of elite opinion. Thanks to these critical electoral filters and to the legally mandated U.S. winner-take-all "two party" system, a candidate who even remotely questions corporate and imperial power is not permitted to make a strong bid for the presidency. Barack Obama is no exception to the rule. Anyone who thinks he could have risen to power without prior and ongoing ruling class approval is living in a dream world.

A Message for America's Ruling Class: We Told You So: by David Sirota, AlterNet. December 13, 2008. - Our bipartisan political Establishment and sycophantic Punditburo have been wrong on the economy over and over again. Please, forgive me for saying it. I know it's a tad annoying, but it has to be said to America's ruling class in this humble column space. Because if it's not said here you can bet it won't be said anywhere else in the media, and it needs to be said somewhere on behalf of the millions of citizens who were right... We told you so.

The Idiots Who Rule America by Chris Hedges, Oct 20, 2008 - Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in “the experts.” They still believe in themselves. They are clustered like flies swarming around John McCain and Barack Obama. It is only when these elites are exposed as incompetent parasites and dethroned that we will have any hope of restoring social, economic and political order.

AMERICA'S RULING CLASS by Bruce K. Gagnon, February 20, 2008 - We often hear people talk about our Founding Fathers. Many say things like, "If our Founding Fathers could see the way things are today, they'd roll over in their graves." Really?

Bluebloods: America’s Ruling Class: This is an interesting bulletin board topic that professes American Presidents are all (or mostly) interrelated - including Barack Obama. Everything from the Illuminati, the Nephilim, and European Royalty. Interesting, but not necessarily factual. I did not make the effort to verify ANY of the claims.

A Labor Day note on the ruling class, by J.R. Nyquist, September 03, 2001 - It was a sly national legislature that hit upon the idea of flattering the majority with a holiday in their honor. Politicians, with their indifferent work habits, huge staffs and long vacations, live far above the toiling masses. Nevertheless, they need those masses at re-election time. And what better way to secure the common man's good will than proclaiming the celebration of Labor Day? Today the ruling class pays spare homage to the non-ruling class majority. Is it shocking to think of our country as divided between rulers and ruled? Is it somehow un-American to poke a hole in democratic fables, to contradict the existence of "government of the people, by the people, for the people"?

Aristocracy is a name associated with Western Europe and the old days. There was, for example, up until the midpoint of the Twentieth Century, an automatic assumption among the powers that be that there were two distinct classes: Aristocracy and Commoners. This attitude is reflected in Pope Leo XIII’s Encyclical of Condemnation, which was issued against Freemasonry for holding, practicing and encouraging such heretical ideas as equality of human beings (male and female) in all aspects of life; including the right of commoners to remove heads of state and other high ranking officials by the rules of law. Can you imagine his chagrin at the American Revolution! It’s important to note, however, that the Founding Fathers of the United States -- that bastion of radical thoughts such as “all men are created equal” -- these people were in the main, aristocrats. Locally grown, perhaps, and without titles, but pretty much the elite. They were also often Freemasons, but that’s another issue. For the most part, they were the people with the money, power, social standing, connections, and family bloodlines. Same old, same old. And any pretense of the American Revolution being merely about the struggle of commoners against an outrageous aristocracy is flawed by a lack of not being the whole truth. In fact, the American revolution was about an American aristocracy using commoners for cannon fodder in a common goal to supplant the English aristocracy and replace them with a home-grown version. Some of the American aristocrats may have been doing what they thought best for the commoner, but these were rare individuals.

THE RISE OF A LIBERAL ARISTOCRACY AND THE FALL OF AMERICA, by Sam Smith (2001) - Future historians seeking to discover why America so easily surrendered its democratic traditions and constitutional government in 2001 will find plenty to study in the rise of a liberal aristocracy that became increasingly disinterested in such values. Like all aristocracies, it existed primarily to protect itself, had an impermeable faith in its own virtue, and held in contempt those who did not share its values or accept its hegemony.

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