American Republicans and Democrats love to paint themselves as independent-thinking, anti-establishmentarians. Republicans decry Academic and Cultural elitists. Democrats decry economic elitists. Both of these groups are actually rattling their sabers at the American Meritocracy and scapegoating away the weaknesses in their own ideologies.
First let’s consider how the two social architectures most often charged with elitism compare to democracy. Corporations have Executive Officers, which are a top-down hierarchy, but they also have stockholders, who exert democratic controls over the company’s management. Similarly, Universities have Deans, but they also have faculty who vote on their institution’s management. Each of these architectures has customers and students who exert control through their patronage.
A combination of representative democracy and populism help steer the course of these institutions, making them meritocratic. The personal attributes each institution emphasizes differ. Economic Institutions value Managerial aptitude and demonstrated economic skills, i.e. wealth. Academia values Instructional skills and a demonstrable aptitude in a person’s field of choice, i.e. degrees.
Are these systems perfect? What democracy is? Pundits who carry no weight with these systems often cry that they are elitist because they are exclusionary, but they are actually complaining that they are not directly involved in the legislative process. This is like calling American Democracy elitist because one was unable to get elected to Congress.
Charges of elitism, as the political parties employ the term, often require vast, yet undiscovered systems of organized conspiracy to support them. The reality is that these are emergent systems, not cognitively engineered social environments. They are not as authoritarian as their detractors would like to make them seem, and if they are exclusionary, then it is because certain ideologies are not well suited to their environmental dynamics.
When a pundit uses the word “elitist,” they are scapegoating, pure and simple. They are making excuses for why their ideology is less successful in some aspects of society. The socialist leanings of liberalism are simply not well adapted to success in the free market. The rejection of pluralism in conservative thought makes it ill equipped for academia. Rather than admit the weakness of one’s ideology and compensate, it’s easier to claim the system is at fault.
The worst part of this rhetorical abuse is how it works to strip the hard work of those charged with it. People who work through nearly a decade of grueling research and application to acquire a PhD are reduced to mindless drones who merely conformed to some liberal paradigm. People who spend their entire lives amassing wealth and the status that comes with it are accused of either benefiting from nepotism or fortunate birth. The personal sacrifices, fantastic demonstrations of willpower and effort are all stripped from these people with that one word, “elitist.”
There is a term for such a rhetorical abuse, ad hominem. Everyone is entitled to express their opinion in the marketplace of ideas, and have them evaluated on their own merit. Respectful and productive discourse has no place for personal attacks.
Note: There is a second definition of “Cultural Elitism,” which is synonymous with snobbish behavior. Substituting the word “snob” with the more sophisticated-sounding “Cultural Elitist” is pretentious, and a form of Cultural Elitism itself. No?