Well, we had a native peasantry at the time. But you were so busy being trenchant, I can see how you overlooked it.

Are you suggesting that the indigenous hunter-gatherer populatioon represented a peasant class? To quote Sr. Inigo Montoya, "I do not think it means what you think it means."

You fail. I'm afraid you're going to have to take Marxism 101 all over again.

Wow, this is wrong-headed. But to take a few points at random:

Western European elites were never humbled and forced to stay that way - they slithered through the 19th century, and dodged the worst horrors of the 20th.
If any Western country's elites managed to dodge the worst horrors of the 20th Century, surely it is America's. Britain's landed gentry went off to slaughter in WWI, and then repeated the act in WWII; the US military, on the other hand, insofar as it was engaged in both conflicts, had many fewer grandees. The German elite, of course, went straight into the military in both the 19th and 20th Centuries, and got the "worst horrors" right up the keister, as it were. What happened to the US elite? As far as I can tell, they just kept on making money, safe at home. While the occasional John Kerry did go to Vietnam, it was far more frequent for a George W Bush to stay at home.

There is an elitist tone to the UK Parliament, to be sure. Just look at its long history of votes on the death penalty: the educated Parliamentary elite consistently voted to keep it abolished (before the Council of Europe made the matter moot) despite opinion polls overwhelmingly in its favour. Or look at all the arguments for keeping the House of Lords. And in general, we Europeans appoint judges in a very elitist way, without the people getting involved either in directly electing them (ugh) or via nasty partisan politics. Maybe it's irredeemably European of me, but I think that sort of thing is vastly more successful than the elected judges and nomination fiascos of the US.

American presidents still follow Washington's example of republican modesty - but given the choice of Louis XIV and George Washington, which would Jacques Chirac or Joschka Fischer prefer to follow? (Or John Kerry, for that matter?)
Funny you should mention John Kerry here, when Karl Rove is plotting decades-long Republican domination of the US government and the Bush executive is showing precisely zero "republican modesty" on anything, happily throwing its weight around, even in the face of strong SCOTUS disapproval. I can't imagine George W ever voluntarily stepping down from the presidency (although I think his father probably would).

As for the list of modest institutions of tertiary education which US presidents have atttended, might I point out that the last prime minister of the UK dropped out of school at 16 and never even got A-levels, let alone a college degree?

And, please, what do you mean by anti-elitism in your corporate governance? Look at the board of directors of any Fortune 500 company: guarantee it's nothing BUT the "elite".

Well, that's a long list of objections, Catfish, but here goes:

Of any Western country's elites managed to dodge the worst horrors of the 20th Century, surely it is America's.

Dodge? I don't seem the remember the Mexican blitzkrieg across the southwest US, or the Canadian assault across Lake Erie. North America was quite peaceful in the 20th century - even more peaceful than Europe in the 19th. And my point is more a matter of continuity. Despite all the tumult and turmoil of Europe in the last hundred years, there is still a deference to elites that is unegalitarian and undemocratic.

There is an elitist tone to the UK Parliament, to be sure. Just look at its long history of votes on the death penalty: the educated Parliamentary elite consistently voted to keep it abolished (before the Council of Europe made the matter moot) despite opinion polls overwhelmingly in its favour.

I have an objection to legislators or judges who imagine themselves to be standing on pedestals, and no objection whatsoever to the execution of murderers.

Funny you should mention John Kerry here, when Karl Rove is plotting decades-long Republican domination of the US government and the Bush executive is showing precisely zero "republican modesty" on anything, happily throwing its weight around, even in the face of strong SCOTUS disapproval

Bush wears modest business attire (not a crown or a sash), he sees that the office is bigger than himself, he speaks the language of the people and doesn't condescend to the people, and he'll leave office in 2009, or 2005 on the off-chance that he loses in November. After he leaves office, he'll go home to Crawford and we'll hardly hear from him again. That's republican modesty.

As for the list of modest institutions of tertiary education which US presidents have atttended, might I point out that the last prime minister of the UK dropped out of school at 16 and never even got A-levels, let alone a college degree?

I do not normally place the UK in the same basket as France and Germany, which is a big part of why it's so appalling to see it willingly placing itself in that basket. But for what it's worth, welcome to egalitarianism - you got here a little late but do enjoy your brief stay while the bureaucrats in Brussels devise a new class system for you.

And, please, what do you mean by anti-elitism in your corporate governance? Look at the board of directors of any Fortune 500 company: guarantee it's nothing BUT the "elite".

I was referring to the more meritocratic and competitive tendencies of US corporations, which companies in Europe are obliged to emulate, often ruefully.

"Sometimes the electorate has to be protected from making the wrong decisions."

Sorry, my (red) thinking cap wasn't on straight. I guess a complex system of land use (hunters and gatherers 'tend' land as carefully as farmers) that was predicated on territorial sharing (or not) for dozens of what were effectively city-states doesn't constitute a peasant class, but I just wanted to remind you that there were big chunks of early Americans who weren't considered qualified to vote. Which, over the past 200 years has included: non land-owners, women, slaves, former slaves, immigrants, those indigenous people (unless they surrender their right to treaties signed by the US), and, oh, yes, anyone who voted in the 2000 Presidential election.

"Complex system of land use?" Where'd you get that from? They had no writing. No mathematics. They had no WHEEL.

"...hunters and gatherers 'tend' land as carefully as farmers..." They don't. They just DON'T. If you knew any farmers you wouldn't make such an absurd claim. For one thing you can find feed several people off one cultivated acre of ground - try that with hunting & gathering - it takes dozens of acres. And those sure must be a busy group of four people, tending dozens of acres...

"...effectively city-states..." Tribal villages? You understand that a village was abandoned after the residents had exhausted all the resources within walking distance, right? Like, every five to ten years, depending on the size of the settlement. And that's among those that weren't entirely nomadic.

And then, oh God, you bring up the 2000 election again. Gore lost. It was close, but he LOST. If you Democrats weren't such habitual cheats, you'd understand that the vote count is the vote count, and Bush won Florida, and thus the Electoral College. It's amazing that you have the audacity to object and whine and caterwaul that Bush finally went to court to keep you from stealing the election through gimmicks played by your crooked apparatchiks in South Florida.

Wrong Sterling. The secret of US success lies in it's neurotic desire for elitism. It is clear that in a state created by renegades and bootleggers and populated - at least for the first fifty years of its history - by the indigent, outcasts, and religious exotics, a desire for belonging and to emulate hierarchical structures has always been fundamental.
Hence all those waspy institutions and ivy leagues, preppy clubs and the thousands of absurd US families who trace their ancestry to early settlers.
But all this is pretty inconsequential. The question I have is why you - a Republican American of all people - would argue against elitism when it is the key ingredient of US success and should be celebrated rather than ignored. For all your stuff about how such a president studied here or threw ball there, the truth is that if you want to get on in the US you have to join an elite. You can argue about how you get there, but the success of that elite is what won the cold war, so don't knock it.

Sterling is right. Unlike in Europe, there are no elites in the US. But even if there are elites in the US, at least they secure democratic institutions. But even if they don't really secure democratic institutions, at least they're meritocratic. But even if they're not really meritocratic, at least they're American. Unlike the ones in Europe.

Given the hundreds of different tribal structures in colonial America, your comments tend towards perhaps the real reason people dislike Americans: loud mouths, blustery, and generally narrow minded. Two random examples from the interweb:

"Chickasaw towns and villages were laid out compactly in times of war, but were spread out in peacetime. A council house in the central area was used for meetings and ceremonies, along with the council ground which was used for open-air gatherings and ball games. Each family had a summer house, winter house and storage building for corn and other supplies [...] The division of labor in Chickasaw society called for men to do the hunting, fishing, house building, boat building, tool making and war making. Women were responsible for agriculture, food gathering and household chores. The Chickasaw, due to their great success in warfare, often had help with work in the form of numbers of slaves taken as captives in their battles."

"Two hundred years before the birth of Christ, the Anasazi began cultivating maize. Horticulture became increasingly important in the growing Anasazi culture and at 1200, the cultivation of maize, squash and beans had become a major food source, possibly more important than hunting. Due to the harsh environments of the deserts the Anasazi inhabited, much of their time was invested in feeding themselves. Agriculture was no easy feat for the Anasazi, rainfall came sporadically between draughts, some of which lasted for years. Most of the wild game in the area were small and thus hard to catch, so the men spent much of the day hunting for meat. The women also labored, weaving cloth by hand and grinding maize into flour with stones. Examinations of the remains of the skeletons of many elderly Anasazi women show severe arthritis caused by constant bending, kneeling and grinding."


Back to the boys club that is this site, how again is America not-elitist in that its suffrage history is no better than Europe? Simple convenience of time frame (America's establishment as an independent country simply dovetailed with a general shift in western culture towards democracy) doesn't make us better. And how about the fact that elistist Europe, on the whole, is much more repsentative of a welfare state that actively redistributes income and services downward? Instead of yammering about where Ford went to college (when in the mean time one could point out that four of the leading candidates for presidency over the past two years went to Yale), perhaps we should measure the quality of life of those who aren't president to determine how elistist a culture is. After all, if the peasants matter, shouldn't their lives reflect this egalitarian significance?

If you've only lived in Europe or its annex in North America (Manhattan Island) you might not realize the depth of loathing that exists in America for snobbery and self-importance.

"Elites" and "Elitism" are not the same things. America has elites, always has. But the culture is both pro-elite and anti-elitist. Europeans complain about this all the time, citing the pedestrian and un-elevated quality of our pop culture, as an example of anti-elitism, and our breathtaking ambition and materialism as an example of our yearning to be elite. The fundamental notion is that just because someone has successfully climbed the ladder, it doesn't make him better than anyone else. This is also reflected in our governance, and I believe it is the taproot of the hostility directed at us today, as I explained above.

Further, and Felix and I have discussed this before, elites in America come in different varieties and often lack a sense of common cause. So they are unable to present a unified path or plan for those aspiring to reach the heights. They are also a notoriously unstable group - "three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves" is an American saying that reflects the notion that social mobility goes both ways.

This is all a part of why there is no one manner of preferred diction or elocution among high-status Americans, whereas in Britain well-to-do Geordies (as an example) send their kids to tutors who train them to speak as if they were raised in the Home Counties.

Further still, money is the only real token of status in America. George Washington was astonishingly wealthy - one of the richest men in the empire at the time of the Revolution. Yet one of his great frustrations was that no matter how hard he tried to present a sophistcated English manner at his manor, high-status visitors from England always considered him a rustic. It offended his vanity and his ambition. Benjamin Franklin had a similar experience at the Court of St. James, where he was humiliated for his humble origins. I believe that sort of experience - which was common enough - left its mark on the culture, and to this day Americans very skeptical of elitist thought and practices.

If anything, it is the left-leaning Democrat Party - the one that has the most in common ideologically with Continental social democrats - that treats American blacks as if they were a dependent, peasant class lacking political sophistication or options.

Sure we do. Keep telling yourself that.

It's not the left that fought tooth-and-nail against the repeal of Jim Crow, which made blacks a de jure second class. It's not the left that erected obstacle after obstacle in the path of voting rights for blacks. It sure as hell wasn't the left who railroaded and lynched blacks to intimidate them into submission to their white betters. And it's not the left who continues the grand tradition of anti-black racism, in all of its glorious manifestations, today.

If the left sees blacks as dependent (a point I do not concede), it's because a lot of folks on the right worked damn hard to keep them that way.

BTW, if blacks are America's peasants, what role is played by our millions of poor whites (who outnumbered poor blacks 1.73-1 in 1998)?

David - The Democrats and the Left have long taken credit for civil rights advances in the twentieth century, but this is largely fiction. I think you'll find that Republicans in the House and Senate voted in significantly greater proportions for the various civil rights acts of the 50s and 60s than did Democrats. And whatever purity of motive that some on the Left may have felt, there are those old rumors about what Lyndon Johnson said when he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which would tend to cast a shadow on them. Johnson was a segregationist until it benefited him not to be one. (Which can also be said of Strom Thurmond, of course, but Republicans never put former Democrat Strom on a national ticket.)

The fact is that Johnson's "Great Society" has wreaked enormous harm on many poor families, black families in particular, by encouraging dependency and discouraging marriage.

Okay, so elites and elitism are different. Was it the elites or their elitism that worked to restrict suffrage?

I've lived in the Midwest, deep South, and Liberal Sodom. I missed that loathing when I lived in the South, where painting one's elistism with a patina of hospitality or gentility was the regional pastime. Just because you live in a relative backwater in the hierarchy of the south, doesn't mean that rampant elitism isn't the order of the day in the 'real' South.

Growing up in the Midwest, I can remember the specificity of the street one grew up on being a measure of 'class'. Not that we used such proactive terms. Most it was a retrograde dismissal of the trash who lived on the wrong side of the main street in town. Or is this distinct from some very personal definition of elitism you are waiting to share with us?

"Bush wears modest business attire (not a crown or a sash), he sees that the office is bigger than himself, he speaks the language of the people and doesn't condescend to the people, and he'll leave office in 2009, or 2005 on the off-chance that he loses in November. After he leaves office, he'll go home to Crawford and we'll hardly hear from him again. That's republican modesty."

Holy Jesus, you can't be serious there, Sterling. Are you saying that wearing golf shirts makes up for his astoundingly arrogant and narrow-minded rhetoric? "Bring it on!"

As for his language, the guy can't put two words together without pausing for 5 seconds. That is not because he is speaking to the common people, who by and large speak a hell of a lot better than Bush, it is because he is not bright.

"If you've only lived in Europe or its annex in North America (Manhattan Island) you might not realize the depth of loathing that exists in America for snobbery and self-importance." Yes, that's true for many Americans, except of course for you, Shirley. This post amply demonstrates your own snobbery and self-importance toward other countries and viewpoints. And don't try to compare the Democratic and Republican parties of the 50s and now. As you well know the legacy of the Civil War and the geographic strength of the parties only broke down after the civil rights movement put off so many angry southern white men.

Oh, I wouldn't dream of equating the Democrats of the 50s with the Democrats of today. The former merited some respect.

Oh, and "sac" is here! Most of you probably don't know sac - he's a hermaphrodite blogger from Sacramento, the capital of California.

Lots of very smart people don't speak well, sac. Bush got a 1206 on his SATs, as I mention elsewhere on the site, so he's pretty bright. I suspect Kerry is hiding his SAT results because they were about the same or lower than Bush's.

It's not his intelligence that worries me, it's his obvious lack of interest in anything beyond his immediate surroundings, and his arrogance. This is all an intractable argument as it comes down to personal style, so I'll end it.

Also, Sacramento isn't getting hermaphrodites nutil 2006, so I don't know where you got your information from. I'll take it as a negative campaign aginst my character based on false information. Damn you nutty Republicans!

New Zealand is one of the most egalitarian countries in the world. We were the first country in the world to achieve sufferage for woman, with universal sufferage achieved shortly after. Our major native land treaty, 'The Treaty of Waitangi', is a well-honoured part of modern New Zealand law.

In fact, some commentators see egalitarianism as a problem in NZ, with the development of 'Tall Poppy Syndrome' (don't let the Australians fool you. It happened in NZ first) Surely a statement of anti-elitism if I ever saw one.

So, it strikes me as strange that, in NZ, George Bush is almost uniformly vilified. New Zealand hasn't even been a country for 228 summers, and yet public sympathy for the American cause in NZ is at its lowest since the nuclear ships fiasco.