The Late, Great American WASP ('bout time somebody said it)

Wall Street Journal ^ | 12/20/13 | JOSEPH EPSTEIN

[GodAndCountryFirst]

The U.S. once had an unofficial but nonetheless genuine ruling class, drawn from what came to be known as the WASP establishment. Members of this establishment dominated politics, economics and education, but they do so no longer. The WASPocracy, as I think of it, lost its confidence and, with it, the power and interest to lead. We are now without a ruling class, unless one includes the entity that has come to be known as the meritocracy—presumably an aristocracy of sheer intelligence, men and women trained in the nation's most prestigious schools.

The acronym WASP derives, of course, from White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but as acronyms go, this one is more deficient than most. Lots of people, including powerful figures and some presidents, have been white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant but were far from being WASPs. Neither Jimmy Carter nor Bill Clinton qualified.

-- SNIP--

WASP life, though, was chiefly found on the eastern seaboard. WASPs had their own social clubs and did business with a small number of select investment and legal firms, such as Brown Brothers Harriman and Sullivan & Cromwell. Many lived on inherited money, soundly invested.

-- SNIP--

The late 1960s put the first serious dent into the WASPs as untitled aristocrats and national leaders. For protesters of that generation, the word WASP didn't come into play so much as the word Establishment, heretofore chiefly an ecclesiastical term. The Establishment was the protesters' enemy and target. The Establishment was thought to have sent the country into Vietnam; it was perfectly content with the status quo, with all its restrictions on freedom and tolerance for unjust social arrangements; it stood for all that was uptight and generally repressive in American culture.

[stonehouse01]

thanks for the very informative post.

[Starstruck]

How about WASPS. White Anglo-Sexton Protestant Straight.

[x]

Romney-Ryan was the first GOP ticket not to have a protestant.

Theologically, maybe. But socially and culturally you'd have a hard time convincing non-Protestants that Mitt was anything but a WASP.

[x]

Say what you want about it, but most societies need a ruling class of some kind -- great families who represent its true ideals.

You might check out E.Digby Baltzell's The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America. That was certainly his view, and some people say he invented the term "WASP."

Baltzell was WASPy and upper class himself (more or less) and a big JFK man. That's the thing about elites: they lean to the liberals. With them (other people's) money tends to be no object.

[ansel12]

Theologically, maybe. But socially and culturally you'd have a hard time convincing non-Protestants that Mitt was anything but a WASP.

I think the Mormonism took care of that, Romney was largely seen as what he was, a white Obama, exotic, out of touch, and almost a foreigner, socially and culturally.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Whether we like it or not...

Iron Law of Oligarchy

[x]

That's your (quite biased) point of view.

To me he looked like many other East Coast moderate Republicans.

The "out of touch" factor was something many people saw in Bush Sr. as well.

[ansel12]

I don’t know why you lash out by calling it “your (quite biased) point of view”, it is the damning image that has colored his 20 years in elective politics, a career that while he spent over 50 million dollars of his own money, and hundreds of millions of other people’s money, resulted in a single election win of less than 50%, and a failed, single term in office with no chance of reelection and ending in losing a presidential election against Jimmy Carter’s second term.

Romney was seen as much more exotic and culturally foreign, than war hero and Texas Congressman, President H W Bush.

[x]

I threw in the bias reference because of your many posts against Mormons and Mormonism (and Catholics, too, come to think of it).

If you don't see that "exotic and culturally foreign" is a relative term in a country like ours, that's your problem. What strikes you as "foreign" won't strike other people in the same way. Romney was not so different from other WASPy East Coast Republican elected officials.

Romney had upper class "out of touch" troubles, but there are plenty of people like that in the country and that doesn't make them "foreigners." I don't see what trashing his political record has to do with it. Since he did beat out quite a few other contenders last time, though, does that make them out-of-touch "foreigners" as well?

[ansel12]

I don’t post against Mormons or Catholics, you sure are going out of your way to make this personal.

Evidently you take your Romney very seriously and want to personally attack an individual who points out something negative about him.

If you can just focus on Romney, then you might see that during his 6 years of running for president, the image that haunted him, was how exotic and Romulan he struck people.

Perhaps we could expect that from a man who is so separated in his social and religious life, after all, Bishop Mitt Romney believes that he will become a God at some point, and he focuses his life on remaining culturally isolated within his religious community.

[x]

Do you actually read your own posts? Your record here is pretty clear.

I don't have any problem with people criticizing Romney. I do it myself. I just don't go out of my way to trash the man. You do.

No point in carrying on another pointless confrontation with you, so I bow out.

[Hot Tabasco]

The acronym WASP derives, of course

I remember the terms used by my grandmother: WASPS, WAPs, Kikes, Jews, pollacks.........boy, as a Ryan, she was one racist Irishwoman......LOL!

[ansel12]

Just read your posts on this thread, including that one, you clearly have a problem with someone saying something negative about Romney.

It was his social and cultural separation that kept him from ever succeeding in politics, the man never made it.

All the millions spent and decades of campaigning, all for a single election win and a single term, the evidence clearly supports what so many people have always said about the baffling and unexplained Mitt Romney, no even figured out what his interest in politics was about, or what his were.

[Born to Conserve]

“That’s not a conservative opinion...”

Oh but it is a conservative opinion. It is the opinion that your private property, and your liberty belong to you, and any gift you make to others must be voluntary.

Note that this does not apply to all poor, only the poor that are receiving welfare. Welfare as it stands, is theft. This opinion is that individuals and groups who want assistance could get that assistance by making a voluntary contract to trade reproductive opportunities for money. Nearly every person I know does this. They chose to have fewer children because children are expensive to raise. It is not an awful thing, it is commonplace. What should not be commonplace is stealing to pay for your children, but that, an awful thing, sadly is accepted.

This opinion is that people and families have authority over themselves, and that they have responsibility for themselves.

My opinions are modeled somewhat after Bastiat, Galton, Malthus, and others.

I won’t say who I think your opinions are modeled after.

[DJ MacWoW]

Forced sterilization is not a conservative ideal. It is a totalitarian tenet.

[Born to Conserve]

“Forced sterilization is not a conservative ideal. It is a totalitarian tenet.”

It is conservative to keep you property and freedom if you wish. It is conservative to not take the property and freedom of others against their wishes.

It is conservative to freely enter in to contracts with others to exchange that property and freedom for other properties and freedoms.

It is conservative to freely enter in to a contract to forgo reproduction in exchange for property.

Welfare is stealing.

[Darren McCarty]

No man rules me, and I’m not a WASP. I sure as hell don’t get my morals from the Rockefeller types either.

As far as protecting culture goes, that’s our job by leading by example. We influence our families.

[DJ MacWoW]

Then it's the government that is stealing. What you are arguing for is more totalitarian control by the government. You seek to punish people that take a government offered program. You have it backwards. The government robs people and offers very little to the poor. Government keeps the bulk of it. Don't back exercising more totalitarian control. Conservatives want to stop government, not give it more power.

[Wallace T.]

In many respects, Romney reminds me of a Republican version of John Kerry, a Massachusetts resident and a Catholic of maternal English and Scottish colonial and paternal Central European ancestry. The latter line was originally Jewish but converted to Catholicism while still in Europe and later adopting an Irish sounding surname. Despite two degrees of separation from “pure” WASP status, in Romney's case due to his Midwestern roots and Mormonism and in Kerry's case due to his partial Central European ancestry and Catholicism, both men adopted the New England and Ivy League, private school culture. They both fit the upper crust Yankee stereotype as seen west of the Alleghenies and south of the Rappahannock. In a related way, politicians like Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie fit the “blue collar” Northeastern stereotype, which did not benefit the former in 2008 and will be an obstacle for the latter in 2016 should he run for President in the Republican primaries.