An excellent article From The Australian
Elitism should not be a dirty word
Peter Saunders | August 13, 2007
WHEN 19th century liberals such as John Stuart Mill made the case for extending individual liberties, they argued it on moral grounds. They believed human beings are put on Earth with talents and potentials which they are meant to develop and exploit to the full, so they urged us to improve ourselves by becoming better educated and more enlightened. To achieve this, they understood we needed to be free.
In the 19th century there were many restrictions on freedom that hindered people from fulfilling their potential. Some of the worst were enforced by law: women, for example, could not own property, had no vote and were legally subordinated to men. Mill and other liberals saw such laws as indefensible, and they fought to have them changed.
Other restrictions were derived from people's social or economic circumstances rather than from discriminatory legal rules. The children of the poor, for example, were often expected to work from an early age, which made it difficult to get a proper education. This limited their opportunities for self-improvement, so children of labourers often grew up tobecome labourers themselves, even if they had the talent to achieve greater things.
Recognising these problems, liberals came to understand that legal equality may not be enough to enable people to fulfil their potential. What is also needed is access to an adequate education and a basic level of material resources so individuals can put their talents to good effect.
Today, most of the restrictions that limited people's opportunities in the past have weakened or disappeared. Race and gender discrimination are both outlawed. A minimum of 10 years' free schooling is guaranteed to every child. The welfare state delivers a basic level of income security and health care to everybody. Competition for jobs is relatively open, and corruption is minimal. There are still inequalities, of course, but if you are bright and strongly motivated, there is little to stop you succeeding.
Yet something is still hindering many of us from developing and fully exploiting our potential. The problem is no longer that we lack opportunity, it is rather that fewer demands are being made of us.
The opportunities are in place but the expectations have been lowered, and because less is demanded, we settle for less and our lives are less fulfilled as a consequence.
In a democratic age, egalitarianism has been redefined as mediocrity. The belief that Jack is as good as his master used to be a liberating idea, encouraging people to strive to succeed no matter what their origins. But the belief that lazy, ignorant Jack watching television all day is as good as his neighbour working all hours to get qualified or build a business is not liberating, it is a recipe for envy, sloth and passivity.
This perverted version of egalitarianism holds that the world owes us a living even if we make no effort to better ourselves. It emphasises our rights but has nothing to say about our obligations. It makes excuses for bad behaviour and derides those who try to maintain high standards. It encourages envy of those who succeed and it treats failure not as a spur to try harder but as evidence of victimisation requiring compensation and special treatment.
Today's egalitarianism makes us reluctant to judge or evaluate people's actions, even when some are clearly better than others. Welfare agencies refuse to discriminate between responsible people who fall on hard times and claimants who bring about their own misfortune through reckless, short-sighted or self-destructive behaviour.
Teachers feel uncomfortable grading students' performances, and they push increasing numbers of low-ability students into university while denying the inevitable dilution in standards this entails.
Psychologists stay silent rather than acknowledge evidence on the deleterious effects of single parenting and the decline of marriage; criminologists prevaricate rather than condemn law-breakers; even theologians hedge on the existence of good and evil. As standards crash, the experts have gone into denial.
Nineteenth-century liberals urged us to improve ourselves, and many working-class people did just that, forming educational associations, creating mutual aid clubs, sending their children to Sunday school to learn about morality. But today's egalitarianism panders to the lowest standards rather than demanding the highest.
TV is a major culprit. Chasing a mass audience in an age of multiple channels has led inevitably to cheap and dumbed-down content: Paris Hilton's drug habit, Shane Warne's love life, an exposed penis on Big Brother.
Crude and vulgar language which was never heard on TV is now indulged with a wry smile. Meanwhile, youngsters exchange videos of fights and sexual assaults recorded on mobile phones, and hard-core pornography dominates the internet.
In the 19th century, Mill warned against weighing the opinions of ignorant people equally with those of the best-informed, for people who make no effort to accumulate wisdom should not expect the respect of their peers. But today, ignorance is prized.
We oblige ignorant people to vote, and we enlist them to serve on juries, kidding ourselves that their judgment is just as valuable as anyone's else's. Then we act surprised when it turns out voters have no idea what the parties stand for, and that jurors are clueless about the cases they hear (research on Sydney jurors last year found many did not even know what verdict they had just delivered).
Politicians talk down to us like children, assuming (rightly in many cases) that they can buy our votes with handouts rather than winning our support with arguments. And on TV, they try to act dumb. Before he got the Labor leadership, hacks speculated that Kevin Rudd was too clever to be elected, but larking around on Friday mornings with Mel and Kochie on Channel 7 helped him over that obstacle. On Channel 9 recently, Health Minister Tony Abbott ridiculed himself for using the phrase "supping with the devil" after he realised nobody else in the studio had heard the term before. The worst thing for a politician is to stand out from the mob and set a standard. American research finds that candidates in presidential debates are using increasingly simple, child-like language as the years unfold. The Gettysburg address cannot compete with a 10-second sound bite.
There is only one area of modern life where we still celebrate excellence, demand high standards, insist on the virtues of competition and devote ourselves to self-improvement, and that is sport. The home page of the Australian Institute of Sport unashamedly uses the word elite three times in its opening paragraph.
Search the websites of our leading universities and almost the only place you will find them claiming elite status is in relation to the sporting achievements of their athletes.
So we are happy to praise elitism in sport but not, it seems, in areas of life that arguably matter much more.
John Stuart Mill must be spinning in his grave.
Peter Saunders is the social research director at the Centre for Independent Studies. He will chair a CIS Big Ideas Forum, "In Praise of Elitism", at the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney today.
