Free Republic

In the 21st century, other elite criteria seem to count as much as the old markers of lineage, money, and location. “Certification,” defined as degrees from the “right” undergraduate and graduate schools, is essential for an elite resumé. Such brands have little to do with education per se or aggregate knowledge acquired. (It is not clear that an Ivy League student would do better on the same SAT, taken upon graduation as earlier, upon admittance). Are our best generals those with Yale degrees, and our best CEOs those with Stanford MBAs? And are Harvard Law Review editors—think Barack Obama, the...

Perhaps I should have called this post “Why ballet at Princeton?” A document sent by the leaders of the Princeton University Ballet (PUD), the student-run ballet club, seems to argue by implication for ditching ballet altogether. The document begins: Ballet is rooted in white supremacy and perfectionism. We are all entering this space with a mindset that what we see as perfect is a white standard. Unlearning that will be difficult but rewarding. Before we begin detailing our action plan, we want to acknowledge that our leadership and those who composed this plan are all white. The last sentence comes...

Wokeism has been described by its critics as the omnipresent use of race—and to a lesser extent, gender—to replace meritocracy and thus ensure equality of result. What follows from implementing that ideology are reparatory actions to reward those of the present by atoning for the injustices done to others in the past. Some see it as an update of 1960s cultural Marxism fads. Others scoff that it is just a return to 1980s-style political correctness. Still more see it as the logical successor to 1990s-type race, class, and gender obsessions—albeit with a shriller and more dangerous Jacobin, Soviet, and Maoist...

Transcript: Ngaire Woods*: The good news is that the elite across the world trust each other more and more, so we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that in every single country they were polling the majority of people they were polling trusted that elite less. So we can lead, but ....

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson takes questions in parliament, London, on Wednesday, January 12. The session comes after Johnson was accused of a breach of lockdown rules on Monday night, with a leaked email showing that one of his top officials invited more than 100 Downing Street staff to a party on May 20, 2020. The Metropolitan Police has said it is in contact with the government over 'widespread reporting relating to alleged breaches' of COVID-19 rules at the time. ...

Despite President Joe Biden’s abysmal approval ratings as the nation suffers from the supply-chain crisis and crippling inflation, elites attending the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night gave the increasingly polarizing president a standing ovation. The moment occurred when comedian David Letterman bashed former President Donald Trump to acknowledge President Biden, who kept his mask fully on during the event.

Adele's performance on Sunday, October 24, 2021, at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California was presented by Winfrey, who was in attendance; other guests included James Corden, Drake, Selena Gomez, Tyler Perry, Melissa McCarthy, Gayle King, Donald Glover, Nicole Richie, Seth Rogen, Gordon Ramsay, Molly Shannon, Ellen DeGeneres, Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor, Aaron Paul, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade, Kris Jenner, Lizzo, Ava DuVernay, and Leonardo DiCaprio.[3][4]

Most of us are familiar with the term “sleeper cell”–referring to agents who are “embedded” into an area or country, where they live quietly and under the radar until it’s time for them to act, such as committing a terrorist attack. Decades ago, I began to notice what I’d call “sleeper people.” I distinctly remember seeing Rosie O’Donnell on the cover of a popular magazine while standing in line at the supermarket. She had just co-starred in a movie called A League of Her Own with Madonna and Tom Hanks. I realized right then and there that certain people are...

... America traditionally has not had a caste system. Until now. We can see emerging, right here in America, a sharp divide between progressive elites and ordinary citizens. This divide can be seen in multiple areas. Progressive elites have high walls protecting their homes, even as they declare that “walls don’t work.” They have private security, even as they insist Americans don’t need guns to protect themselves. They somehow elude accountability even when they break the same laws that get ordinary citizens into major trouble.

In recent years, long-term trends in economic inequality have attracted growing attention from social scientists, which also reflects civil society’s increasing awareness of the deepening economic disparities. In this context, particular attention has been paid to the share of the total income or wealth earned/owned by the top of the distribution – usually the top 1%, 5% or 10% among individuals or households. The share of the top richest is both interesting per se (as it is informative of “how rich” the better-off are), and as an indicator of the overall trends in economic inequality. New time series of wealth...

The Masking of the Servant Class: Ugly COVID Images From the Met Gala Are Now Commonplace From the start of the pandemic, political elites have been repeatedly caught exempting themselves from the restrictive rules they impose on the lives of those over whom they rule. Governors, mayors, ministers and Speakers of the House have been filmed violating their own COVID protocols in order to dine with their closest lobbyist-friends, enjoy a coddled hair styling in chic salons, or unwind after signing new lockdown and quarantine orders by sneaking away for a weekend getaway with the family. The trend became so...

Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson discusses op-ed that calls out the Democratic Party as 'the party of wealth,' suggesting Republicans need to make the argument that they're 'the party of the middle class.' Wokeness comes from the elites who are wealthy and who cannot be effected personally by the policies they promote such as defund the police, or radical energy policies that drive up fuel prices.The elites have enough money that they can buy their own protection without relying on police.Similarly they are wealthy enough that fuel prices and inflation do not effect their life style These woke...

Many Americans—focused on their businesses, careers, home, and family—prefer to ignore the political battles and attendant controversy dividing our country. But neutrality is no longer an option. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about Americans’ love of being left alone. He called it “individualism,” and he fretted that one of the risks to our experiment in self-government was the tendency to retreat from questions concerning the public—political questions—in favor of enjoying our private lives. The risk, he recognized, was that retreating would enable subversion of the whole polity by people manipulating it for their own gain. Sound familiar? Our society has morphed...

Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row will soon feature a men’s homeless shelter smack-bang in the middle of it despite a three-year offensive to halt its creation by members of the city’s elite, the New York Court of Appeals has ruled. Residents of the city’s priciest street fought tooth and nail to halt Mayor de Blasio’s $60.8 million plan to open a 150-bed men’s shelter in the closed Park Savoy Hotel at 158 W. 58th St., arguing the location would be a dangerous “firetrap” and that crime would inevitably ensue on the ritzy block.(snip) The now defunct Park Savoy Hotel will house a...

Problems for New Mexico Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham have largely flown under the radar as leader of a state overlooked by the legacy press corps.Searchlight New Mexico, an independent investigative non-profit organization, broke the news last week that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office supported using the encrypted messaging app Signal to conceal communications among staff.The potential violation of the New Mexico Public Records Act came to light after the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, which is overseen by the governor, fired two senior employees who raised concerns over the app’s use.“Department leadership then set many of those...

Today a motion was unsealed in the Ghislaine Maxwell case that give us serious concerns about the government’s case against Maxwell. I’ll make this brief. The unsealed motion had to do with Maxwell’s recently rejected motion for release on bail. It had been sealed because it references documents that are still under seal. You can read the full motion for release on bail here. I won’t go through the whole motion - only the parts that stand out. First, Maxwell makes the accusation that “the government concedes it cannot establish that either Ms. Maxwell or Epstein ever caused, or sought...

Adam Townsend had a great podcast interview with journalist Lee Smith last week, and for the first time Smith eloquently hit on something CTH has discussed for several years. The “elites” writ large are so open in their current proclamations of being beyond reach, because they want us to know their power removes them from any accountability. Often we see people ask ‘why are they so openly admitting to their wrongdoing’? Within the answer I have written frequently ‘they simply do not care’… It is not a sense of boundless hypocrisy that drives them to showcase their disconnect, the disconnect...

Michael Lind is emerging as one of the most important voices of our current political and social moment, and Tablet, which has been publishing him, as one of the most important magazines. Here’s a new piece he’s done on the new national American elite — something that has never before existed, in Lind’s telling. In past eras of US history, elites have been regional. No more. Lind’s take on how elitism has worked in US history is interesting, and worth a read in itself. Here is one conclusion he draws about our present elite: Membership in the multiracial, post-ethnic national...

Lately, Sam Jacobs has been having a lot of conversations with his family’s lawyers. He’s trying to gain access to more of his $30 million trust fund. At 25, he’s hit the age when many heirs can blow their money on harebrained businesses or a stable of sports cars. He doesn’t want to do that, but by wealth management standards, his plan is just as bad. He wants to give it all away. “I want to build a world where someone like me, a young person who controls tens of millions of dollars, is impossible,” he said. A socialist since...

If I’m not mistaken, he was exempt from the state rules pursuant to the overarching national rule that liberals are entitled to ignore social distancing guidelines so long as it’s for an Important Cause™. Like holding mass demonstrations against police brutality. Or smoking weed in a park with strangers to celebrate Trump losing. Or [checks notes] attending a friend’s birthday party.