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Profit should never come at the cost of human blood. Any government that places profit before people is pure evil.”
-- Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
-- Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
People like my folks, their parents, as well as myself and my siblings, as Ross Douthat writes in "Why We Miss WASPs," were "hardened in the cold of New England boarding schools, acculturated by the late-night rituals of Skull and Bones, [and] sent off to the world with a sense of noblesse oblige." Such folks formed America's Establishment; however, while circumstances and trappings distinguished the Establishment from everyone else, common to all were the virtues the Establishment embraced, those qualities thus enshrined as moral mores that formed the core of American culture.
Last week's abundance of reflections on George H.W. Bush's life revealed poignantly that sometime between 1960 and 1990, a hell of a lot of people "dropped the ball" as go cultural and personal ethics. Many of these folks shall, like most old guarders, to most remain nameless even as we daily encounter them. Others, most notably our current president, will go down as the architects and heirs of the cultural catastrophe coursing our cathedrals, colleges and countrysides.
Mind, there's plenty to revile regarding the rule of the WASPs. The Establishment presided over an America that, existentially even if not prepensely, denied to nearly all but white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males the promise, pursuit and fruition of the American Dream. That's nothing of which to be proud; however, the old American WASP aristocracy, the Establishment, for all its faults gets one thing right: it has an abundance of, thus shared liberally, modesty, humility, restraint and, most importantly, public esprit de corps. As public leaders and policy makers, late 20th century Establishment members, George H.W. Bush most notably but also being the only one to obtain the presidency, exhibited unassailable will and capacity to do the right thing, to act virtuously, when it'd have been far easier to cave to public opinion. Of course, one didn't need to be a WASP to behave so; that only took the will to do so.
So where have the WASPs gone? Well, the Establishment hasn't gone anywhere. Its members remain where they always have, albeit with quieter voices and less public faces. That suits the Establishment fine for its members' place in society faces no more jeopardy now than it ever has. The Old Guard isn't gone, I dare say it's weary, or perhaps apathetic. America has been right to disabuse itself of the discrimination and other downsides of old Establishment thinking, but in doing so, it's discarded both the "baby" and the "bathwater." The question, then, is who be worse for it? I assure you, it won't be the Establishment.
The Age of Chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold the generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprize is gone!
-- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
-- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
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