
The Late, Great American WASP - grellas
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304367204579268301043949952?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories
======
parennoob
I hate the treacly, overly politically correct world of today, but these WASPs
of the past that the chap in the article is lamenting so much were pure,
unabashed racists. For this reason alone, I'm bloody glad they're not in
power.

"The last unashamed WASP to live in the White House was Franklin Delano
Roosevelt"

Yeah, a shameless person who refused to meet black athletes, including Jesse
Owens after the '36 Olympics (even Mr. Godwin's Law is rumoured to have shaken
hands with Owens), and was responsible for the Sith-sounding Executive Order
for internment of Japanese Americans
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066)).

We're much better off without this sort of rubbish in power. Good riddance.

~~~
zeteo
> these WASPs of the past that the chap in the article is lamenting so much
> were pure, unabashed racists

And sexist and elitist - but not more so than the society they lived in.
Holding them to the norms accepted today is about as pertinent as calling them
uncool because they lacked iPhones. Plus, it erases distinction between people
like Lincoln who, while expressing very racist views, did a lot to bring
things closer to equality; and others like say John C. Calhoun, who did their
utmost to push the opposite way. History makes no sense unless you take it in
context, my friend.

~~~
parennoob

      Holding them to the norms accepted today is about as
      pertinent as calling them uncool because they
      lacked iPhones.
    

No, screw that. If they were racists, I am going to call them racists. I don't
give a flying f--k that they "did a lot to bring things closer to equality".
What am I supposed to do, be grateful?

    
    
      History makes no sense unless you take it in context, my
      friend.
    

I'm not the one waxing eloquent about the demise of this ruling class -- the
author is. My point is that it's a good thing that they are no longer in
power, regardless of what historical context their (extremely flawed)
behaviour might have been in.

~~~
bmelton
In the future, there is likely someone who will be equally able to look back
at some primitive activity we're currently engaged in right now and call all
of us idiots for some reason or another.

If you eat meat, or plants, perhaps you'll be referred to as a barbarian.

If you drive electric cars, perhaps you'll be called a planet killer.

If you don't bathe in milk, perhaps you'll be called a Typhoid Mary.

Ignoring the context of the times is a naive way to look at things. In 1996,
the Defense of Marriage Act was passed, and many rejoiced. In 2013, the
Defense of Marriage Act was declared unconstitutional, and many rejoiced; in a
lot of cases, the very same people. I was a complete homophobe in 1996, and
attend rallies and champion gay rights in 2013.

Society moves quickly now, but it didn't always. Yes, I was stupid for my
homophobic ways in 1996, but so was almost everybody else. It's hard to hold
an opinion, even one you know to be true, when everybody else disagrees with
you. It's even harder to be the oddball that tries to advance the cause for
equality.

Just because the WASPs were once racists, that doesn't mean the same people
would be now. Times change, and smart people change along with them. By not
acknowledging that, the inverse of your argument is just as laughable.

"those slaves of the past that the chap in the article is lamenting were
totally spineless lackeys and yes men, completely subservient to white people.
For this reason alone, I'm bloody glad that they're not in power."

~~~
RodericDay
the fact that "smart people" go along with bad social mores says more about
the faults with who we denote as "smart people" than about the way we should
judge people from the past.

you say "if they were smart today they wouldn't be racists", I say "they
probably don't deserve as much credit as they get, if they were racist while a
tiny minority of people was aware of the problem and trying to move past it".

there have always been people against slavery, against the oppression of
women, against homophobia. don't dismiss their efforts and achievements in
examining society just because you don't want to sully the image of
technocratic heroes.

~~~
bmelton
I'm speaking out of context from those people specifically as, for the most
part, I don't have any particular adoration for them.

Regardless, you simply cannot take things out of the context of history. In
that day, it was common to find scientific evidence (or at least reports
masquerading as scientific from otherwise esteemed scientists) suggesting that
non-caucasian races were inferior, and weren't meant to be treated as equals.

It wasn't too long ago that the common knowledge was that homosexuality led to
increased and unavoidable risk of diseases.

It's too easy to look back on history and decry those idiots for succumbing to
common knowledge, but it is naive to do so.. and is analogous to mocking them
for letting so many die of Polio, when it is so easily vaccinated against now.

------
joelgrus
Buried in the paragraphs of treacle is an important point about supposed
"meritocracy":

"Having been a good student, no matter how good the reputation of the
school—and most of the good schools, we are coming to learn, are good chiefly
in reputation—is no indication of one's quality or promise as a leader. A good
student might even be more than a bit of a follower, a conformist, standing
ready to give satisfaction to the powers that be so that one can proceed to
the next good school, taking another step up the ladder of meritocracy."

I don't think it's necessary to wax nostalgic about the heyday of WASPism to
recognize this, though.

------
ddebernardy
The first paragrap suggests that the US currently is a meritocracy; whereas in
the past few years, I've had the impression it was a kleptocracy run by
bankers. It's probably just my own impression, though. Is there really any
kind of meritocracy that goes beyond lip service in the US? (Or anywhere else,
for that matter, since there was no such thing in any country I've lived in.)

~~~
edias
>I've had the impression it was a kleptocracy run by bankers.

Is this really the view that foreigners have the how the states is run?

We actually rank among the least corrupt nations in the world depending on if
you trust Transparency International or not. I guess you could say it's
legalized corruption through lobbying and political donations, which I agree
with to some extent, but even than it wouldn't be bankers. Pharmaceuticals top
that list with room to spare, where as "Securities and Investments" don't even
make top 5.

Lawyers are really the people who run America and anyone who has any sort of
political ambitions will get a law degree, not become a banker.

Obviously the Citizens United case (the one that allows Corporations to
donate) was fucked, but it's not like 20+ years ago everything was fine
either. I really think this is just a result of HN/reddit having such a young
demographic, no one remembers how bad things used to be as well.

Iran Contra? MK Ultra? The FBI under Hoover? Police assaulting union workers
because why the fuck not? Rampant political corruption by organized crime in
the 20s/30s?

You know the phrase "I wan't America to be the way I grew up in"? It's not
because America was different, it's because you were a kid and didn't see any
of it.

~~~
ddebernardy
> Is this really the view that foreigners have the how the states is run?

Might be just people I interact with, but terms like plutocracy, kleptocracy,
and theocracy all come up fairly regularly. As does police state, for that
matter. Terms like republic or democracy seldom get mentioned -- not seriously
anyway.

(Not saying the grass is so much greener elsewhere, mind you.)

> We actually rank among the least corrupt nations in the world depending on
> if you trust Transparency International or not.

I don't trust them personally, but I'm in full agreement with that point
nonetheless, having seen and experienced corruption first hand in developing
countries.

> I guess you could say it's legalized corruption through lobbying and
> political donations, which I agree with to some extent, but even than it
> wouldn't be bankers. Pharmaceuticals top that list with room to spare, where
> as "Securities and Investments" don't even make top 5.

Unless, perhaps, you count TARP and under-the-counter bailouts that Bernanke
handed over in recent years. But I'll happily concede if I ever see material
clawbacks and jailtime for the related ill-gotten gains.

> Lawyers are really the people who run America and anyone who has any sort of
> political ambitions will get a law degree, not become a banker.

The same is largely true in any country [and time] where a significant
bureaucracy is leveraged to run a large enough political unit. Which is to say
just about every country nowadays, bar warzones such as Somalia.

Also, that doesn't mean that these countries are run _for_ lawyers. If
anything, the cynic in me wants to compare them to valets who are content to
cooperate with their masters in order to keep the small amount of privileges
that they have over the masses.

------
zaraflan
It's astounding that an article like this is published in 2013 anywhere but
the dark corners of supremacist sites and the memoirs of fading British lords,
where it belongs.

This is nothing more than moaning that the modern predominantly-white,
predominantly-male, virtually entirely rich elite are too "new money" for the
old predominantly-white, predominantly-male, virtually entirely rich elite.

~~~
untilHellbanned
hyperbole much? See reader5000's comment below for a fairer assessment.

------
rtpg
His argument is that WASPs were men of "character"? What a load of tripe.

I honestly cannot believe this is being published in the WSJ, an article
wanting for a return to hereditary rule (not that it's gone far from that, but
still). Awful, awful things.

I, for one , look forward to the last time that people try to use a
"standards" argument in deciding things.

An interview with the Prime Minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
:[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S2NKlMW0vc#t=1059](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S2NKlMW0vc#t=1059)

"All that we say is lets have some standards, in decency , in behavior , and
in civilisation" , this is the argument to justify not giving 95% of the
population franchise in elections.

The more I hear people talk, the more I feel that "moral standards" and
"decency" are arguments that are only used to enforce some existing (usually
racist) plutocracy.

~~~
saraid216
> I honestly cannot believe this is being published in the WSJ

This isn't really a surprise coming from the WSJ...

Here, this will make you lose more faith in humanity.

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-
monarchy/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/)

------
bsirkia
Is it just me or is there kind of too much going on in this essay? It moves
pretty quickly from a history of famous WASP writers and presidents, why WASPs
dominated, to how WASP dominance declined, how America is now a meritocracy,
that meritocracy is built on overeducation, it isn't as good as WASP-ocracy,
and something to do a with "greedy pigs" that are overeducated.

~~~
reader5000
He's just observing the putative pros/cons of having a society ran by a
hereditary elite, versus by the spazzes that got all the best grades in
school. He doesn't clearly prefer one over the other, but laments the erosion
of the good parts of the old regime.

~~~
bsirkia
That's a great summary.

------
mcantelon
WASPs idealized virtue, which to some extent promoted it within their culture,
but there was certainly corruption. Allan Dulles is named in the article, for
example. He literally used his power to foment wars in other countries to
advance his personal interests. And corruption allegations against the Bush
family are voluminous.

I think a big difference in the perspective of today's elite is due to
globalization and technological advances. The population of the US was
valuable in the past because outsourcing wasn't feasible and war was less
mechanized. Now the population, judging by the federal government's
development of counter-insurgence measures over the past decade, seems to be
regarded more as a threat than an asset.

------
pstuart
I say this as a WAS (no, P, thank you very much). Cry me a freaking river. Not
included here was the WASPs he worshipped were all men. And this strawman
bullshit about nobility of WASP character and how "meritocrats" are hypocrites
shows that the author is one of the "old breed" that needs to die off as soon
as possible.

~~~
apsec112
"An ad hominem attack is not quite as weak as mere name-calling. It might
actually carry some weight. For example, if a senator wrote an article saying
senators' salaries should be increased, one could respond:

Of course he would say that. He's a senator.

This wouldn't refute the author's argument, but it may at least be relevant to
the case. It's still a very weak form of disagreement, though. If there's
something wrong with the senator's argument, you should say what it is; and if
there isn't, what difference does it make that he's a senator?"

[http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

~~~
pstuart
Huh? What ad hominem did I apply? That he's got an old-school mentality that
worships the good old days without acknowledging the negative parts?

It was kind of funny having such worship of WASPs come from a jew. Whatever.
No point in wasting any more time or effort over this.

------
D9u
Meritocracy?

What a load of garbage!

    
    
        http://www.ncsociology.org/sociationtoday/v21/merit.htm
    
        "According to the ideology of the American Dream, America is the land of limitless opportunity in which individuals can go as far as their own merit takes them. According to this ideology, you get out of the system what you put into it. Getting ahead is ostensibly based on individual merit, which is generally viewed as a combination of factors including innate abilities, working hard, having the right attitude, and having high moral character and integrity. Americans not only tend to think that is how the system should work, but most Americans also think that is how the system does work (Huber and Form 1973, Kluegel and Smith 1986, Ladd 1994).
    
        In our book The Meritocracy Myth (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), we challenge the validity of these commonly held assertions, by arguing that there is a gap between how people think the system works and how the system actually does work. We refer to this gap as “the meritocracy myth,” or the myth that the system distributes resources—especially wealth and income—according to the merit of individuals. We challenge this assertion in two ways. First, we suggest that while merit does indeed affect who ends up with what, the impact of merit on economic outcomes is vastly overestimated by the ideology of the American Dream. Second, we identify a variety of nonmerit factors that suppress, neutralize, or even negate the effects of merit and create barriers to individual mobility. We summarize these arguments below. First, however, we take a brief look at what is at stake. That is, what is up for grabs in the race to get ahead?"
    

[http://www.law.umn.edu/lawreview/v85n2.htm](http://www.law.umn.edu/lawreview/v85n2.htm)

~~~
sbierwagen
Might want to invest in some linebreaks. (fold --spaces --width 60)

    
    
      According to the ideology of the American Dream, America is 
      the land of limitless opportunity in which individuals can 
      go as far as their own merit takes them. According to this 
      ideology, you get out of the system what you put into it. 
      Getting ahead is ostensibly based on individual merit, 
      which is generally viewed as a combination of factors 
      including innate abilities, working hard, having the right 
      attitude, and having high moral character and integrity. 
      Americans not only tend to think that is how the system 
      should work, but most Americans also think that is how the 
      system does work (Huber and Form 1973, Kluegel and Smith 
      1986, Ladd 1994).
    
      In our book The Meritocracy Myth (Rowman & Littlefield, 
      2004), we challenge the validity of these commonly held 
      assertions, by arguing that there is a gap between how 
      people think the system works and how the system actually 
      does work. We refer to this gap as “the meritocracy 
      myth,” or the myth that the system distributes 
      resources—especially wealth and income—according to the 
      merit of individuals. We challenge this assertion in two 
      ways. First, we suggest that while merit does indeed affect 
      who ends up with what, the impact of merit on economic 
      outcomes is vastly overestimated by the ideology of the 
      American Dream. Second, we identify a variety of nonmerit 
      factors that suppress, neutralize, or even negate the 
      effects of merit and create barriers to individual 
      mobility. We summarize these arguments below. First, 
      however, we take a brief look at what is at stake. That is, 
      what is up for grabs in the race to get ahead?

------
jpttsn
> The old U.S. ruling class had plenty of problems. But are we really better
> off with a country run by the self-involved, over-schooled products of
> modern meritocracy?

Being vague is sorta almost as fun as doing this other thing.

I think social criticism today relies too much on arguments made between lines
to be effective.

------
Zigurd
> _The WASPs ' day is done. Such leadership as it provided isn't likely to be
> revived. Recalling it at its best is a reminder that the meritocracy that
> has followed it marks something less than clear progress. Rather the
> reverse._

Wow. Obama has been disappointing but he hasn't come close to the damage Dubya
did. Dubya really was a drunk dimbulb, and his name got him into Harvard
Business School. Heck of a dividend we got from that anti-meritocratic inbred
WASP-favoring move there. Let's try a really meritorious president next time.

And just above the words "Trust, honor, and character" I see John and Allen
Dulles. Seriously? I wish I could call the author of this piece uninformed but
I think it's worse than that.

------
mynameishere
If anyone is baffled by why this article exists, go to your favorite search
engine and type "the new wasps", including the quotes. The target audience
doesn't need to do that, but you might.

I find it odd that it was posted here though.

~~~
rtpg
maybe it's a good reality check to realize that society has not moved on as
far as we might hope. Or maybe the WSJ's editorial board hasn't. There's a
disconnect somewhere.

~~~
saraid216
In the last few months, I've been noticing that every major political issue
throughout the entire history of America ties strongly into the Civil War,
either as a prelude or as an effect. I'm not a historian, though, and I'm
worried I have a golden hammer, but...

When I was in high school, I looked around at my school and saw how diverse it
was and said to a friend online I'd never met that racism was dead. She told
me that, when she was a child, a burning cross had been thrown into her yard.
That would have been ~1980.

I don't think society has really moved on at all. I think a lot of us were
simply distracted for a while, and deluded by the brevity and light treatment
given in schools.

------
quanticle
With articles like this, is it any surprise that the Republican Party is
having trouble relating to a diversifying, increasingly immigrant America?
When one of its institutional mouthpieces is publishing articles that
celebrate eras in which the majority of modern America would have been
excluded from the levers of power, is it any surprise that the American public
is choosing to reject the Republican party instead of rolling over and handing
back rights that were hard won during the twentieth century?

I mean, let's look back at the era in which WASPs ruled American political
life. They heyday of the WASP was basically from the end of reconstruction
through the beginning of the Great Depression. These were great years... if
you were a WASP. If you weren't, they were years of rising income inequality,
rising racism, rising anti-immigrant sentiment and rising corporate power.
Sure, TR, and later, FDR, went some way in ameliorating the worst excesses of
WASP power, but they were viewed as class traitors by their fellow WASPs.
These were years where, like today, the rich got richer, and everybody else
got screwed. As a proud member of Everybody Else, I'm glad that WASP power has
been irrevocably broken. I do not want to go back to an era in which I am
excluded from the most desirable positions in society simply because I am of
the wrong race, religion or gender.

------
selimthegrim
Stewart Alsop called, he wants his book draft back.

[http://www.amazon.com/Stay-Execution-Memoir-Stewart-
Alsop/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Stay-Execution-Memoir-Stewart-
Alsop/dp/039700897X/ref=la_B001H6KRLS_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387659063&sr=1-1)

NB for relevance: In the late 60s, Alsop (the brother of Joseph in the
article) would use his Newsweek column to rant about the lack of WASPs in the
CIA and State Dept. making us lose the Vietnam War.

~~~
selimthegrim
In fact, a play about Joseph Alsop's life and this milieu the OP speaks of was
on Broadway not so long ago starring John Lithgow as Alsop.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/theater/the-columnist-
diss...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/theater/the-columnist-dissects-
joseph-alsop.html?_r=0)
[http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/07/the_colum...](http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/07/the_columnist_broadway.php)

------
donjigweed
Another classic from Joseph Epstein. The same guy who wrote, "There is much
that my four sons can do in their lives that might cause me anguish, that
might outrage me, that might make [me] ashamed of them and of myself as their
father. But nothing they could ever do would make me sadder than if any of
them were to become homosexual."

------
mcguire
" _What our new meritocrats have failed to evince—and what the older WASP
generation prided itself on—is character and the ability to put the well-being
of the nation before their own._ "

With regards to the older WASP generation, I would like some independent
verification of their character and ability.

------
elohesra
You keep using that word 'meritocracy', I do not think it means what you think
it means.

It seems the author, Joseph Epstein, picked up on the idea that using
privileged education as a proxy for merit is probably a bad idea, yet why he
feels that this vindicates WASPishness is beyond me. It wasn't even
particularly clear why WASPishness was included in the article at all, since
it seemed only to serve as a mildly interesting biographical backdrop on an
argument that centered around evaluating the worth of university.

Frankly, the article seemed like it had no clear direction. It banged on about
meritocracy throughout, and used ivy-league universities as some sort of prima
facie proxy for merit, yet it seemed to tiptoe around the crux of the
argument: ivy-league universities are the new WASP. Yet rather than make this
point outright, and show that attending an ivy-league school is no more an
indicator for merit than was WASP birthright, the writer spent the majority of
the article romantically eulogizing the old-school WASP. Frankly it all seemed
a little tenuously connected.

That said, its strongest point -- on which it spent the least time -- was the
argument that privileged education does not prove anything of one's abilities.
This is certainly true in my experience, yet this undermines the article's
claim that a meritocracy would choose someone with a privileged education. If
a meritocracy is marking irrelevant traits as indicators of merit, then all
that shows is that the meritocracy is incorrectly assigning merit, rather than
showing that the concept of meritocracies themselves are flawed.

Maybe it's only in the tech community that quality of output is seen as a
better proxy for merit than educational background, but here at least I don't
believe I've seen much weight attributed to education. When given the choice
between two candidates, one of whom having attended MIT and the other of whom
having written some fantastic systems, it's been my experience that it is the
latter candidate who would be more desired by tech companies. In a meritocracy
where one's output alone is judged, that seems to me to be a fair system,
because -- unless the output is intrinsically tied to some unfair advantage --
it seems that it cannot be gamed through class, gender or race. I felt that
the author failed to consider such a meritocracy, and instead -- to his
discredit -- just assumed 'merit' and 'ivy-league' are synonymous without
arguing to prove such a point.

Why any of you should care what I thought of this essay is another point
entirely...

------
cowpig
Once upon a time, racist white upper-class men ruled the United States
honorably and without corruption, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest
president...

I wish the author provided some examples or evidence to support his rather
outrageous claims.

~~~
cglace
He said strongest president not best. Simply look at the 1980 electoral map. .
.

------
cafard
Remarkably stupid. Did Joe or even John Kennedy philander more than J.P.
Morgan? Has anyone in a hedge fund today the imagination to dream up the
schemes of Collis Huntington or the first Harriman? Did John D. Rockefeller
win a name for honest dealing?

And (as that proto-wasp Henry Adams pointed out) some things can be more
harmful than simple corruption. It would be hard to find anyone now who thinks
that John Foster Dulles's influence was anything but harmful. And how about
Robert McNamara (whose name looks might Irish, by the way)?

------
001sky
_A financier I know who grew up under the WASP standard not long ago told me
that he thought that the subprime real estate collapse and the continuing
hedge-fund scandals have been brought on directly by men and women who are
little more than "greedy pigs" (his words) without a shred of character or
concern for their clients or country. Naturally, he added, they all have
master's degrees from the putatively best business schools in the nation._

~~~
ddebernardy
As Bill Black says: the best way to rob a bank is to own one. (He even wrote a
book titled like that.)

~~~
001sky
Sames is true of any business, or any "non-profit". The more unethical you
are, the easier it is...

------
beachstartup
asking if america is better off without the ruling wasp class is like asking
if the world is better off without the british empire.

the arguments for, and against, are practically identical.

------
clarkm
I think the best example of this shift can be found in the Supreme Court: not
a single justice is a WASP, but they all have degrees from Harvard or Yale.

------
wil421
Thank god. I'd rather live in a world that represents everyone than to have a
ruling class consisting of a single type.

------
virtualwhys
I thought everyone was upper class, is it just me?

God I love these fucking piles of cash

\-- James Chalmers Lang III

p.s. name made up, I have 4 20s on my desk.

------
michaelochurch
The WASP elite was, relative to most elites that human history has graced our
species with, a very decent one. (Was there racism and corruption? Of course.
But they _aspired_ to decency, a trait not seen in the current elite, and not
seen in most elites. I'm not calling them good in absolute terms, but in
relative terms.)

So, in the middle of the 20th century, they did an unusually decent (and
unusual) thing. They accepted their own decline. For one example, they
invented the SAT, whose initial result was to increase the number of Jewish
students admitted to Ivy League universities by about an order of magnitude.
(Then there was a racist backlash, which is where we get all that
extracurricular bullshit in US college admissions. Elites are not monolithic.)
Why'd they accept their own decline? I think they were self-aware enough
(again, as a group) to recognize that there was no choice. Without letting FDR
save capitalism via the New Deal, the U.S. would have fallen into economic
collapse and political chaos, and not been able to fight the two-front
(cultural, and then actual) wars against fascism and communism. The stakes
were existential. When facing a choice between the risk of obliteration (but
also the assurance that, if there was a country left, they'd rule it) and
gentle decline (to merely quite rich, but not a ruling class) they took the
right path. Very few elites do. Most let their countries burn.

What happened next is _not_ a meritocratic invasion. The _global_ elite (which
is much more anti-democratic) stepped in. That's been bad for all of us. The
WASPs care enough about the country not to destroy it. The global elite is not
tied to any one nation, and doesn't care.

Upper-middle-class "meritocrats" are _not_ the ruling class, and the people in
charge have more in common with Russian oligarchs and Arab oil sheikhs than
with either (a) the somewhat callous but stately and pro-democratic (or at
least _republican_ , with no reference to the political party/megachurch)
WASPs or (b) the well-educated technology adepts who top out in the upper-
middle-class. In the US, the current elite tend to look like WASPs because, in
fact, many _are_ ethnically WASPs, but their ideology comes from a dirtier
source: a global elite whose values come mostly from places where political
corruption is just another perk of being rich, where democracy is ridiculed,
and where the poor are held in open contempt (and exploited, and often shut
down violently) by the rich.

