Our elites in this country have failed us utterly, and must be taken to task for their poor performance.
A nation’s elite is charged with the responsibility of upholding that nation’s values and serving as an example to the rest of us that if we conduct ourselves according to their ethic not only will society be better off but we as individuals will have the opportunity to perhaps one day become or at least approach members of the elite. This is especially important in a nation like America, which is built on the notion of social mobility and the promise that anyone might achieve the kind of success which would qualify for elite status.
But in America there is a total disconnect between how an elite of a great nation should conduct itself and what we’ve gotten. Our universities employ criminals and traitors like Bill Ayers and Ward Churchill. Hollywood makes movies and TV shows glorifiying sexual deviance, trashing our military and demonizing our private industry. Our news media is unabashedly socialist and has absolutely no pretense of objectivity or respect for the truth. Our business elites rise to the top largely as a result of office politics and once they’ve achieved positions of upper management they enrich themselves at the expense of their shareholders; the entrepreneurs who in former days would build a business from scratch and ride it all the way to international fame now sell out to their competitors the minute they can cash in. Our clergy cannot escape being enmeshed in scandal. Our music industry glorifies sex, violence and antisocial behavior and is celebrated for it. We confer celebrity status on people beyond redemption like Paris Hilton and Rosie O’Donnell. And so on. If this is how the elites in this country behave, what does it say about the kind of country we have?
This must change. Not as a result of legislation; that doesn’t work anyway and it’s a cop-out. It must change as a result of LEADERSHIP. And we conservatives are the ones to effect this change, because unlike the other side we don’t believe in coercion. We accept the challenge of LEADING our nation into making itself the moral and ethical standard the world should look to as its role model.
I’m talking about the culture here, and the thrust is to eliminate whatever disconnect there might be between social conservatives and those of us who are more focused on economic and fiscal policy. Our Founding Fathers were very clear in their admonition that without a virtuous society, a democratic republic cannot survive – but restricting human freedom is not the answer.
The answer, I believe, is to discredit the left-wing avant-garde elitists as unworthy of their influence – and to present positive examples of those who live their lives and speak their minds as conservative icons. I leave it to the reader to discern how best to accomplish that end.
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