Quotes About Elites

What is interesting is that, although it is framed as a war between the elites and Main Street, the Tea Party is actually really good for the elites.

If the Tea Party gets its way, there will be less government - which is great for the elites. They don't need the government.

Similarly, dubbing everyone whose reading of history leads them to conclusions different from the preferred ones black-armband historians; channelling frustrations felt by the politically powerless to the politically correct; isolating chattering classes and elites from a pretended mainstream – all these and many terms of political abuse are common and inevitable in democracies – and all have parallels in tyrannies.

The suspicion of authority was intrinsic to the post-1960s political left: to rely upon the judgment of experts was to surrender to the prejudices of established elites. Thus, the left had its reasons for advancing an agenda that professed to make institutions accountable and transparent, using the purportedly objective and scientific standards of measured performance.

In retrospect, it is fair to conclude that the message of Limits to Growth was not ignored. It did get through to the elites for whom it was prepared, and they responded by squirreling away whatever resources they could carry off from the commonwealth. Denial is the term commonly used to describe resistance to evidence of climate change and other ecological threats. Yet the cumulative record of this steady pillage suggests the opposite has been occurring.

We live in a time when all elites, whether on the left or the right, believe in rigid rules that say there is no alternative to the present political and economic system.

Washington, as we know it, is essentially run by men and women who are not elected or even appointed to their posts, staff members unaccountable to traditional constituencies. They rise according to the needs and whims of their own special constituency of elites.

While Obama, the olive-branch poseur, has called for a restoration of 'civility' in Washington and liberal elites whine and whinny about the need for 'no labels,' class-warfare demagoguery has metastasized unchecked.

The elites have become international, and they've ceased to have a primary loyalty to the nation-state.

The privileged elites are part of the globalization moment that we live in.

Israel's pro-American orientation exists not just among Israeli elites but also among the whole population. Come what may in Israel, it's inconceivable that this fundamental orientation will change. Combined with its overwhelming military power, this makes Israel a unique and irreplaceable American asset in the Middle East.

What's wrong with politics in the celebrity billionaire analysis is politicians. Populism is not so much a cry for economic equality, or even a disdain for elites, but a mass revulsion against the inauthenticity of politicians. Celebrities are real celebrities, politicians are fake ones.

Surely a number of such people want to do the right thing, are well-intentioned, but just as surely some do not act from creditable intentions. Some of our elites…professors, journalists, makers of motion pictures and television entertainment, et al.…delight in nihilism and destruction as much as do the random killers in our cities. Their weapons are just different.

Europe's elites, 'the Reformation replaced loyalty to Christendom with loyalty to "nation", and it also replaced Christian identity with national identity'.

The real bias of the media is not to the left or to the right, but to the thin strata of economic elites at the top of our society.

The result? An increasingly stratified online world in which the rules about what we can say are determined by a motley crew of elected officials and non-elected elites, some of whom have alarmingly close ties to government.

While in general the governance of speech on social media has been on a trajectory of increased transparency and accountability, the policing of so-called terrorist speech is becoming more and more opaque, and decisions about policies are being made by elites, behind closed doors, absent the meaningful inclusion of civil society … and the communities likely to be most affected by such decisions.

This form of soft dictatorship does not require mass violence to stay in power. Instead, it relies upon a cadre of elites to run the bureaucracy, the state media, the courts, and, in some places, state companies. These modern-day clercs understand their role, which is to defend the leaders, however dishonest their statements, however great their corruption, and however disastrous their impact on ordinary people and institutions. In exchange, they know that they will be rewarded and advanced.

In a typically contradictory move, globalisation, while promoting economic integration among elites, has exacerbated sectarianism everywhere else.

The fact is that during the post-1989 heyday of globalization optimism, political and business elites did not think enough about the prospect - plainly predicted in economic theory - that trade would harm some people even while leaving society as a whole better off. The result was overpromised benefits and inadequate adjustment plans.

Political battles are won when the rich favor them.

Why do elites hate the poor? It's xenophobia. They don't know any poor people - except their off-the-books Brazilian nanny and illegal immigrant cleaning lady from Upper Revolta who don't speak English.

Political elites vote in a more partisan fashion than the mass public; this tendency, too, follows a curve. The more you know, the more likely you are to vote in an ideologically consistent way, not just following your party but following a set of constraints dictated by a political ideology.

The secular elites are so terrified of telling the truth about radical Islam. When you talk about the radical Islamists, we have got to get straight and get serious and talk about it in the right way.