Denationalized elites


"highly educated people who feel a loyalty more to secular liberal principles than to their own country,"
Michael Barone's blog at USNews.com talks about "The Politics of Polarization," the latest paper from Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck. I haven't read the paper, I certainly hope that someone other than Beltway Democrats does read it and soon. Just from Mr. Barone's summary, I think it covers much of what is wrong with the Democrat Party leadership.

What really caught my attention though was at the bottom of the third page.

Samuel Huntington notes in his book Who Are We: The Challenges to America's National Identity the emergence of "denationalized elites" in this and other countries—highly educated people who feel a loyalty more to secular liberal principles than to their own country. Such elites and their nonelite counterparts now constitute a large and, in 2004 at least, dominant segment of one of our political parties. Powerlineblog Tuesday morning contained a letter from its Iraq correspondent Major E., who reports that after he returned to his home in northern California he contacted local organizations and offered to speak to them about what he had observed in Iraq.

Now I have not read Mr. Huntington's book so I really don't know if it is any good or not. But that phrase. "denationalized elites — highly educated people who feel a loyalty more to secular liberal principles than to their own country," well, I think he has got something there. I am certainly not a "my country right or wrong" ultrapatriot, but leaving the country and just because "my guy" didn't get elected never would occur to me. I would stand and make a fight for what I believe in, and for what I owned. Yet there are people who not only have thought about it, but have done some planning already. And I am not talking just about the high profile liberals from the coasts.

There are a lot of things wrong with this country. But there are also a lot of things right. Beyond the partisan winner take all politics, this nation offers opportunity that simply isn't available anywhere else on the planet. There is too much of what I believe tied into the history of this place for me to feel really at home anywhere else.

No, it's not "my country, right or wrong." But it is my heritage. The European origins of my ancestors are centuries removed. This is the place of "Give me liberty or give me death!" This is the land of "The time is always right to do what is right." This is the inspiration of freedom.

That is worth fighting for.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - October 13, 2005 at 04:45 AM  Tag


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