WARNING - This is an academic argument that may offend you. Proceed at your own risk.
Elitism is the notion that some people are more valuable than others, that some cultures have contributed more to the growth of humanity than others, that some contributions to literature, art, philosophy or science are better than others.
Elitism is refreshing in a culture that has become, as a friend of mine once put it, a "sea of mediocrity."
We have embarked upon an era in which shortcomings are not personal faults; instead they are mere reflections of how our parents raised us. Or they are reflections of some childhood event that has chased us and haunted our adulthood. We live in a time in which people with "special needs" are integrated into classrooms that they don't belong in, thereby slowing the rest of the class, not to mention creating the hurt felt by the child who can't keep up with her friends. Or where children are promoted to grade levels they can't cope with for social reasons, even though nothing could be more socially taxing then being incapable of keeping up with your friends. Or a world in which a bad grade corresponded to a bad TA, a bad professor, some unfortunate set of circumstances, but never laziness or incompetence. Or a world in which the average American is extremely fat, not because we eat too much or exercise too little or both, but because we are oh-so-busy.
Today, a bad grade doesn't make you any less capable than your neighbor, who did well. You are still equals, right? If you're a hardened criminal, it's not your fault, it was your environment. Not so - if you're an adult and childhood problems still plague you, get a shrink! Having "special needs" means little Timmy's finger painting is just as remarkable an achievement as the discovery of penicillin, hence the saving of many, many lives, right? Or being fat is fine because it's an unfair social structure that it is desirable to be fit, right? After all, it's your slow metabolism - not you - even though you can change your metabolism with a good exercise regimen. These all are excuses to equalize the superior and the inferior. These explanations confirm our self-confidence, and by doing so, keep us mired in the sea of mediocrity.
This myopia is unhealthy. If we expect society to grow in terms of wealth, freedom, justice and culture, we must be willing to recognize superior forms of all of these. This means that treating the inferior and superior as the same thing is self-defeating. We must be willing to recognize that the University of Virginia is superior to Bob Jones University as an institution of higher education, if we are to use this to inform public policy decisions about which to give more funding to. In other words, the University's academics are involved in serious research while the "academics" at Bob Jones are involved in serious bigotry. But if they are to be treated as equals, and if funds are to be allocated accordingly, too few research dollars would be given to U.Va. and too many bigotry and hatred-tinted dollars would be given to Bob Jones. And yes, I know Bob Jones is a private school, but the hypothetical is instructive nevertheless.
Similarly, we ought to recognize that a government whose national populace is starving, underclothed and without homes is inferior to one that can provide a dignified life for the better part of its citizenry.
We ought to recognize that female genital mutilation is a barbaric and inhumane practice that renders the civilizations that use it inferior to ones that care about female reproductive health, such as ours. To the cultural relativists out there, my answer is: no! No, as in many cases like this, it doesn't matter that different cultures see things differently; some cultures see things wrongly. There might be something to the claim that elephant dung art and Picasso are apples and oranges - maybe, I remain unsure about that - but slicing up female organs without anesthesia and without consent to satisfy men is plainly wrong. If you are a closed-minded cultural relativist, you see no reason to combat this inhumanity. If you are an elitist, you do.
Author William A. Henry III, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of "In Defense of Elitism" remarks that "the term 'elitist' ... has come to rival if not outstrip 'racist' as the foremost catchall pejorative of our times." Continuing, he observes, "the very word, used as a label, seems to be considered enough for today's rhetoriticians to dismiss their opponents as defeated beyond redemption."
Nothing could be more unfortunate. Were we to apply elitism to many civil rights and civil liberties issues, I think we would find that the analogy to racism or other social pathologies is bad. We would find that equal opportunity among races is to be valued. We'd find that tolerance for homosexuals is preferable to closed-minded bigotry.
In any event, if you're offended, don't say I didn't warn you.
(Jeffrey Eisenberg's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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