<p>I can look at George H.W. Bush for an example of that old-line WASP public servant, and I have a lot of respect for that. </p>
<p>I don’t think Epstein’s article is well-articulated, but I do see his point. Today’s big-shot money makers don’t seem to have the sense of noblesse oblige.</p>
<p>There are no inheritors to noblesse oblige because the term carries with it a connotation of class superiority that doesn’t apply to nearly the same extent in a more meritocratic world. Otherwise, there are plenty of charitable wealthy people today, just as there were plenty of compassionless tightwads in the age of the WASP aristocracy. I would also add that there have been so many there have been so many other social and political changes since that era
that to attribute a perceived decline in responsible leadership to the decline of WASP rule and the ascendancy of the polyglot meritocracy is a very narrow perspective. Whatever their problems, we do have government programs like welfare, social security and medicare that have co-opted some of the social role once assumed by the benevolent rich. Given that, it is no wonder if the wealthy don’t feel quite the urgency they did when the kindness of strangers was literally the only thing that stood between plenty of people and starvation.</p>
<p>The idea that the old order had a level of integrity and honor that these money-hungry arrivistes lack seems to me dangerously close to the kind of thinking that led colleges to introduce fuzzy “moral character” assessments to justify keeping out talented Jews in the 1930s. I wonder if Epstein would appreciate the irony.</p>
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<p>The vibe I’m getting from his article and similar defenses of the old WASP order is similar to the historical revisionist writings I’ve read about various outmoded past regimes. </p>
<p>They include the defense of aristocratic class dominated British society of the 18th century to criticize the American Revolutionaries’ tossing off British Imperial rule*, the Aristocratic and high clergy dominated ancien regime in pre-1789 France, Southern revisionism about antebellum society and slavery/Jim Crow not being as feudal/bad as portrayed by genuine historians, etc. </p>
<p>And I’m not even bringing up the fact most portrayals of noblesse oblige and the rose-tinted views such portrayals present need to be viewed with some skepticism. Especially considering such portrayals facilitated their continuing elite status and hold on American or other societies, may not be all its cracked up to be upon closer historical scrutiny, and obscure the negatives of their societal dominance. </p>
<p>What’s more ironic is that the very older dominant upper-classes who criticize more recently arrived members of their SES for being were often once regarded in the same way in the past. </p>
<p>One good example, how the British aristocracy and landed gentry of the 18th and early 19th century regarded American colonial WASPs…including the upper-classes dismissively as “mere money-grubbing tradesmen & shopkeepers”. </p>
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<li>This seemed to be a common theme in history books friends who attended British Commonwealth oriented international schools used. A.K.A. “The spoiled American colonists just didn’t know how good they had it under British rule.”</li>
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<p>You “see” a lot of things that remind you of imperialism and snotty people-looking-down-their-noses-while-eating-cucumber-sandwiches-and-drinking-tea. Social status is a fixation with you.</p>
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<p>Considering that article is discussing contextually a group fitting a demographic commonly associated with the higher SES classes, I don’t see why you’re having a problem with it.</p>
<p>It is more ironic when that demographic was and to some extent, are still sometimes viewed as an elite group in our society.</p>
<p>WASP=Nazism = nice use of Godwin’s law…Good grief.</p>
<p>Agree completely, deitz. Myopic and inflammatory to boot.</p>