The most popular book in America right now is the inspiring true story of a 4-year-old boy who visited heaven during his emergency appendectomy. Upon recovering, young Colton Burpo told his parents about how he had met Jesus, who rides on a "rainbow horse." His father, an evangelical pastor, was astonished. The boy's story couldn't possibly be the product of a dream or his imagination -- after all, there are "rainbow colors described in the book of Revelation, which is hardly preschool material," and Colton described Jesus as having marks on his hands and feet. How would a 4-year-old living in a pastor's house have picked up that information?
Heaven Is For Real is No. 1 both on Amazon and on The New York Times bestseller list of combined print and e-book nonfiction lists. Apparently, millions of Americans find the story so compelling that they will gladly hand over 10 bucks or so to pore over all its 163 large-type pages revealing glorious truths about the nature of existence.
If I were to juxtapose this story against politicians' frequent invocations of the American people's extraordinary wisdom, the insistence that the most complex policy challenges can be solved if we would only listen to the people's "common sense," the reaction would no doubt be that I have revealed myself to be that most sinister of characters, an "elitist." Fair enough.
But the truth is that in politics, we're all elitists of one sort or another. Not even the most ardent populists would be comfortable if they heard that, say, a nominee for Treasury secretary from their own party actually believed that Jesus rides on a rainbow horse and 4-year-olds under anesthesia get to meet him. No one would want the president selected according to which candidate was closest to the mean in intelligence and experience. Nevertheless, everyone denies they're in the elite and thinks the true elite is somebody else. The only question is which elite you think ought to be pulling the strings.
Before going further, we ought to define just what we mean by elites and elitism, and this is where the right and the left diverge. To the left, the elite is defined primarily by wealth. The elite are those with money and power, the ability to influence the economic and political life of the country. Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs are the elite. If you host a television program and a nationally syndicated radio show, you're in the elite (no matter how hard you work to convince us that you're nothing but a blue-collar guy).
To the right, on the other hand, membership in the elite has nothing to do with money or power but is more a matter of education, geography, and cultural affinity. To them, university professors and people who live in large cities on the two coasts are the elite. People who value education and expertise are the elite. Unlike progressives, who think you can tell whether someone is in the elite by the size of their bank account, conservatives believe you can tell whether someone is in the elite if they drink lattes and prefer NPR to NASCAR. To a conservative, a millionaire Hollywood screenwriter and an assistant professor of English literature making $40,000 a year are equally elite because of their supposed cultural distance from the common man.
One positive thing you can say about both of these elites is that in today's America, they are perfectly open to new members -- no need to be part of an aristocracy handed down through generations. A child of poor immigrants can get an advanced degree; likewise, no one speaks contemptuously of the nouveau riche anymore. If you made $200 million last year from the hedge fund you manage, the GOP will happily defend your interests to its dying breath, whoever your grandparents were. And this is what elitism in politics is really about: not who you are but whom you represent.
Today's Republican Party has its preferences in non-economic areas such as foreign policy and social policy. But no one doubts what the party's top priority is: advocating for the interests of the wealthy and corporations. Among the party's most sacred tenets are that taxes can never be raised, particularly on those at the top; unions ought to be crushed; and the prerogatives of large corporations to do things like pollute at will must be protected and expanded.
That this party manages to retain the support of substantial portions of the middle class is an extraordinary political accomplishment. And the conservative arguments about the liberal elite, those snooty, condescending professors and actors, help keep those white middle- and lower-class voters in the Republican tent by convincing them that their votes should be based on something other than economics. Back in 1988, George H.W. Bush, a scion of the American aristocracy if ever there were one, sneered that his opponent, a son of Greek immigrants, hailed from the "Harvard boutique." A dozen variations on the theme are delivered by conservatives every day, the anti-elitist pose in the service of elitist policies.
But you can be part of an elite without being an elitist. When it comes to evaluating our public officials, we shouldn't care much whether they are members of an elite class, however we might choose to define it. What we should care deeply about is on whose behalf they are working. We have had presidents who came from wealth and power yet worked on behalf of the downtrodden (Franklin Roosevelt), and those who came from the most modest circumstances yet worked to enhance the wealth of the wealthy (Ronald Reagan).
At this moment of Republican ascendance at both the federal and state level, some people are being asked to sacrifice. The unemployed are having their benefits cut, public employees are having their collective-bargaining rights taken away, and schools are having their budgets cut. But no sacrifice has been asked of the wealthy and corporations. To the contrary, Republican legislators and governors insist, as they thrust their budget knives downward, that we must shower those at the top with more tax breaks and the removal of pesky regulations, in the hopes that they might trickle their largesse down upon the rest of us.
I'm not afraid to say that readers who thrill to Heaven Is For Real, or people who think that astrology is a science, or those who believe that putting on a metal bracelet will recenter their energy flows should not be running the country. But nor should they benefit any less than anyone else from government's actions. Policies ought to be crafted by those who understand policy, but not even the most arrogant liberal would find a way to construct policies favorable only to liberal elites (it isn't as though professors of health policy are suggesting that we establish special gold-plated health-care plans available only to those with Ph.D.s). Representatives of the economic elite, on the other hand, most definitely work to serve the interests of the economic elite when they get the chance -- and the rest of us end up paying for it. That's the difference between the elitism of the left and the elitism of the right: It's not about who's in charge; it's about what they do.
