Priestly Rule (II)

Intellectual rule via elite control began with Mesopotamian priests 6000 years ago.

For the U.S., Kennedy’s “Camelot” was a high point of intellectual rule. David Halberstam brilliantly defined this rule in The Best and the Brightest, which documented the origins of the Vietnam disaster. The intellectuals made a Faustian bargain for the keys to the Pentagon, agreeing in exchange to wage an aggressive popular defense of freedom in the face of international Communism.

Kennedy’s “best and brightest” won the Cold War’s most important victory in 1962 by adeptly handling the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy followed that up with the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, and turned that year to completing our civil rights revolution at home, which the Kennedy team under Texan Lyndon Johnson carried to victory in 1964-65.

Of course, the commanding intellectual control over America all came apart over the next four years, as brains separated themselves from the Democrats responsible for Vietnam.

Intellectuals drove the U.S. from Vietnam. Intellectuals used Watergate to drive Nixon from the White House. Since that double triumph, the Democratic Party home of the intellectuals has held power in Washington (White House + Congress) for just 6 years out of 40—15% of the time. From the coming of the New Deal until 1968, Democrats controlled Washington for 26 of 36 years—72% of the time. Used to power as an entitlement, intellectuals have been frustrated by the Republican Party’s return to power since Vietnam, largely through use of the national security issue.

But while denied full political power, the modern-day priest class has come to dominate our national elite made up of bureaucrats plus institutions that need government’s help to further their agenda—entertainment and the arts, academe, the Third Sector, and the media. The only elite groups outside this Democratic core are the military, small business, the clergy (but only social conservatives), and big business (but only those who oppose high taxes). Entitlement, the belief that it is right for intellectuals to rule America, is alive and well in 2007.