QUOTE

Codevilla traces the beginnings of the new Ruling Class to the Progressive Era. He wrote that “Wilson was the first American statesman to argue that the Founders had done badly by depriving the U.S. government of the power to reshape American society.” Like Obama, Wilson, and later FDR, wanted to reshape American society to suit their own preferences. Any failure on the part of the American public to embrace their Progressive agenda only convinced both Twentieth Century and contemporary Progressives that the American electorate was stupid and backward. Or, as in the case of Frankfurt School immigrant Theodor Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality (1948) that conservative and traditional Americans were pathological fascists.

The Progressive Left has always craved political power, in order to accomplish their goal to remake society. Not being big fans of limited, decentralized and Constitutional government, Progressives have always been in favor of centralizing power in the hands of the state. The assumption has always been that they knew better and that the rubes from “fly over country” were really not capable of self-government. As Codevilla wrote:



The Progressives do not believe in the impartial workings of a free market or the rule of law that applies all laws equally to all citizens because they believe that they know best who deserves what. The market cannot be trusted to sort out winners from losers; only they, the ruling elite, should be entrusted with such matters. “When the bubble burst, only those connected with the ruling class at the bottom and at the top were bailed out,” Codevilla noted. In the process of picking winners and losers, the ruling elite became the benefactor for various victim groups who can be counted on at election time. Codevilla remarked that “if you are not among the favored guests at the table where officials make detailed lists of who is to receive what at whose expense, you are on the menu,” probably meaning you are going to pay the bill (in taxes). The hubris of the ruling class knows no limits; they not only believe they can control the economy by printing and spending money, now they even believe that they can control the climate.

QUOTE

Thus in the 1990s and 2000s, as Democrats and Republicans forced banks to make loans for houses to people and at rates they would not otherwise have considered, builders and investors had every reason to make as much money as they could from the ensuing inflation of housing prices.

QUOTE

Thus the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Kelo, which allows the private property of some to be taken by others with better connections to government, reminded the country class that government is not its friend.

QUOTE

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial
independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no
independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of
Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.