The Three Functions of a Ruling Class, Then and Now

I was checking out the meaning of noblesse de la robe yesterday, and of course it led me to the three Estates of old-regime France. Let us rehearse it.

The First Estate was the clergy. Their job was managing the moral framework of France.

The Second Estate was the nobility. But they had two jobs! Nice work if you can get it. There was la noblesse de la robe. Their job was running the higher administrative echelons of the justice system, where, I suppose, they got to wear cool robes lined with ermine or something. La Wik:

[They] were French aristocrats whose rank came from holding certain judicial or administrative posts... The most influential of them were the 1,100 members of the 13 parlements, or courts of appeal.

The tippety-top of la noblesse de la robe was the Parlement de Paris, the closest thing to a Supreme Court. And, in the years before the Revolution of 1789 the Parlement de Paris sometimes handed down decisions that challenged the power of the KIng, Louis XVI.

Then there was la noblesse de l'epée. Yessiree, the nobles of the sword. La Wik:

[They] were the noblemen of the oldest class of nobility in France dating from the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, and arguably still in existence by descent. It was originally the knightly class[.]

And it got me to thinking. I dare say that, if you are a person with pretensions to be part of a ruling class, you probably need to be in one of the three noble categories: priest, high administrator, or warrior.

Because some things never change, and our brains are still programmed in much the same way as in 1788.

Now obviously, our cancel-ologists and our Karens and Beckies are the modern priests, searching and destroying sin and corruption wherever they find it in unredeemed racist-sexist-homophobic sinners. And some of them are like itinerant friars, our activists, that don't just sit there issuing sermons on Sundays, but go out into the community to purge it of evil elements.

And just as obviously we have our own special noblesse de la robe. That's all the educated snobs in administrative government and its regulatory agencies, that love to issue ukases to the rabble about recycling and vaccine passports.

Whatabout the vitally important noblesse de l'épee, working out at the local fencing club? Well, it's pretty obvious. These folks are the heroic peaceful protesters celebrated in verse and song, the BLMs and AntiFas heroically battling it out with far-right extremists that dare to pollute the sacred streets of our progressive cities with their conspiratorial disinformation. And as you get older, you learn the fencing skills of elective politics.

One of the things that exercise my mind is that the old male pursuits of war and aggressive hierarchy are less vitally important these days than in the good old days when you never know when the Vikings or the Huns or the Mongols might show up.

But men still want to smite the attacker of their sacred ancestral lands. And they still want to be cock of the walk in whatever society they strive, whether in politics, business, religion, activism. If nothing else there is the necessity of achieving high status because hypergamy as practiced by our female friends.

But can't we do better?

Isn't there a better way of moral preening than cancel culture and Greta Thunberg style "How. Dare. You?" Isn't there a way of setting a moral example without the abomination of what we call "virtue-signaling?"

Isn't there a better way of serving the administrative needs of society other than nice cozy sinecures in administrative bureaucracies funded by the state, you professors?

Isn't there a better way of protecting society from violence than posturing in the street as the street thugs of the regime, as close as you can get to the fascist Sturmabteilung of the National Socialist German Workers Party without actually putting a swastika on your arm?

There's gotta be a better way than the corrupt and vile culture of our present ruling class.