Irving Kristol was Right
Irving Kristol argued that he was witness to a new kind of class war — the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector. And Jonah Goldberg remembered “Irving’s role as the ‘godfather of neoconservatism’ and the founder of The Public Interest. That is as it should be. From that perch, Kristol led a massive counteroffensive on what he called the ‘new class — statist intellectuals, lawyers, social workers, educators et al.'”
Growth of centralization of power in the Federal government began in theories of the positive state that are evident in the writings of the French philosophes. But even before they had their fifteen minutes of fame, Louis XIV controlled France absolutely. In the United States, movement toward centralization of power in the Federal government began with the Progressives in the late 1890s and the early 1900s.
By the time traditionalists in the United States realized that they had a problem, a “new class” had sown deep roots, almost as deep as the “industrial, military complex” that President Eisenhower warned against in 1961.
That new complex of power relations is in power–no matter who controls the Federal government–and is made up of attorneys, university administrators and professors and powerful media concentrated in cable television and Internet communication services.
Attorneys and universities are beneficiaries of massive government largess and media serve as what Stalin called “transmission belts” by which their powers become culturally dominant. Can this be overcome, or are the freedoms of our grandparents and parents “gone with the wind” like the Confederate States of America?
Frankly, unlike Rhett Butler, I do give a damn!
