America's Real Ruling Class

It’s the Spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution

We highlighted over the past weekend the ‘heroic’ contribution of Angelo Codevilla to America’s ongoing trial (click here). But on Monday, when Rush Limbaugh spent almost an entire show on Mr. Codevilla’s seminal essay, an entirely different scale of attention will be given to Codevilla’s important essay. This will be good for America and the world.

Codevilla’s bottom line is that the ongoing stirring in America is really about a revolt against the decades-long emergence of a ‘ruling class’ based in liberalism and intellectualism. It’s centered mostly in the Democrat Party but also enveloping most of the Republican officeholders once they have been, as Trent Lott says, 'co-opted' into the Washington, D.C., establishment.

Codevilla’s thesis, with Limbaugh’s amplifier effect, will resonate with engaged Americans throughout the country. But the questions will linger—so how do we actually overthrow this ruling class and prevent the next set of officeholders from becoming the next ruling class?

Count us among those who say now and forever that the answer always lies in following the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Objections to this simple answer are as predictable as they are mistaken. Here’s a sampling, and the reasons they are mistaken:

The founders were 18th century white men in wigs, plus some of them owned slaves. Therefore nothing they had to say can be trusted.

The first sentence is true; but the “therefore” doesn’t follow. The media and political attack culture would have us believe everything is about people and personalities. They are wrong. Everything is about ideas and how they are embraced. People just carry them out, and benefit from them when they are right ideas.

The ideas of the Declaration of Independence are right. That the authors and many readers today don’t live up to them does not disprove the rightness and power of the ideas, any more than moral failings disprove the rightness of moral teaching.

Times change; what was wisdom before isn’t wisdom now.

Times change in chronological and surface-level ways. Political correctness definitely changes over time. Wisdom never does. The Bible is the Bible, and billions read it today, for precisely this reason. Wisdom finds expression in new ways, but wisdom itself springs from timeless truth.

All the God/Creator stuff in the Declaration is religious fantasy.

It’s beyond the scope of this essay to take on the full dimensions of that argument. For now, just note that the country which emerged from this Declaration of Independence has produced in 200+ years the most monumental progress in human living conditions as has ever been recorded, by orders of magnitude. Why is that?

All men are not created equal.

They are in the sense that the founders meant it, which is that no men are superior to others by reason or circumstances of birth. No hierarchies, no castes, no ruling class.

There is no God, or even if there is, we don’t know what relevance He has to daily life.

Nothing is more relevant or essential to making daily life worth living than God-given, inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Besides, we need some rules around here, or else we’ll have nothing but chaos.

It’s when we remove God and God-given rules like the Ten Commandments from public life that we have real chaos. It’s when George Soros and his ‘open society’ take over that we’ll experience anarchy, destruction, violence and tyranny on an unimaginable scale.

The best antidote to the disease of an arrogant, elitist ruling class in America is the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. The best way to make sure the antidote is applied is to find people who grasp that spirit, not as a matter of opportunism or clever speaking, but in the heart and soul. You’ll know them when you hear them. Sarah Palin is one; Allen West is another. There will be more. The American awakening is accelerating.

Paul Gable

July 20, 2010