The "Bondman" in More's "Utopia"

I've been reading Sir Thomas More's Utopia, because I thought I oughta. And there I was cruising along, trying to decipher the very thick prose, when suddenly I came upon the word "bondman."

What! There were slaves in the perfect state of Utopia? I had no idea.

Actually, I have two translations of Utopia. One is a chatty translation by Paul Turner in 1961, and the other is the original translation from the Latin by Ralph Robinson in 1556. I've been reading the original translation, but I think that the Sixties version is easier to understand. Here is the start of the original:

They neither take bondmen of prisoners taken in battle, unless it be in battle that they fought themselves, nor of bondmen's children, nor, to be short, of any such as they can get out of foreign countries, though he were there a bondman.

But let us look at the original Latin. That I just downloaded, old chap. And you can too! The paragraph begins:

Pro servis neque bello captus habent.

So, More is using the Latin "servus" that Robinson translates as "bondman." It's interesting that Google Translate has two synonyms for "servus:" "mancipium" and "famulus." Let's write these up with Google's suggested meanings:

Servus -- servant, slave, bondman 

Mancipium -- slave, property, manicipation, possession, bondman, thrall 

Famulus -- servant, slave, house slave, housecarl, valet, varlet

See, what I experience here is that back in the good old days there were all kinds of gradations in subordination. And we, who have so nobly cast slavery aside -- Commie socialist paradises excepted -- really don't know what we are talking about when it comes to human bondage.

Of course, by the Sixties we call a slave a slave. Here is the modern version from Turner:

By the way, the slaves that I've occasionally referred to are not, as you might imagine, non-combatant prisoners of war, slaves by birth, or purchases from foreign slave markets. They're either Utopian convicts, or, much more often, condemned criminals from other countries, who are acquired in large numbers, sometimes for a small payment, but usually for nothing.

The reason for slaves in Utopia is that they don't have any of your modern prisons of which we are so proud. Whaddya do with the antisocial, anyway? Put 'em in jail or put 'em to work?

Both types of slave are kept hard at work in chain-gangs, though the Utopians are treated worse than foreigners. The idea is that it's all the more deplorable if a person who has had the advantage of a first-class education and a thoroughly moral upbringing still insists on becoming a criminal -- so the punishment should be all the more severe. 

Hmm. Compare the following with our current illegal immigration and work-under-the-table economy: 

Another type of slave is a working-class foreigner who, rather than live in wretched poverty at home volunteers for slavery in Utopia. Such people are treated with respect, and with almost as much kindness as Utopian citizens, except that they're made to work harder, because they're used to it. If they want to leave the country, which doesn't happen often, they're perfectly free to do so, and receive a small gratuity.

Now, the thing to remember about Utopia is that it is hard to be sure when More is serious and when he is joking.

But I would say that our present notion that slave equals negro slave equals Middle Passage equals the crime of the ages equals white supremacy equals systemic racism is desperately adolescent.

Slavery is part of a continuum of domination and hierarchy, and subordinate status in human society. There are all kinds of gradations in human freedom and human subordination. (Was there ever a slave more abject than the Soviet prisoner in the Siberian Kolyma gold mines?) 

And there are all kinds of different people. Some people want to be free and a bird and damn the torpedoes; others want security, whatever it costs. Most of us want to be free and expect to be protected. Ain't we all stinkers, as Bugs Bunny put it?

What made plantation slavery scandalous in our age, I suspect, began with the fact that, for a while, plantation slavery was very profitable for enterprising men that were not out of the top drawer, especially in the production of cane sugar, from Cyprus to the Caribbean. It was especially annoying when they brought their wealth back to England and built Mansfield Park and bought baronetcies and went into Parliament.

It is interesting that More's bondmen were not conquest slaves; the Utopians were done with that. But it is fascinating that "immigrants" from poor countries were put to work as slaves, and no doubt thought themselves better off than in their previous life. And it is interesting that the immigrant slaves were given a bonus if they decided to leave Utopia.

See, in my view the American immigrant story is not that different. Many peoples that have immigrated to the US had to start out working very hard for meager wages, under near slave conditions in those famous "sweat-shops" of which we've heard tell.

And in my view the union worker is working in a kind of quasi-slavery, the creature of his union boss and his corporate boss who both play power games using the helpless worker as a pawn. Like many a slave, they were cast out when they were no longer useful.

In my view, the gubmint worker with lifetime employment and a pension is not exactly a free person.

Nor is the employee of a corporate colossus.

And what is the status of the current American citizen that must contribute 30-40 percent of his earnings to the government? Is he a free-man? A serf? A bondman? A "famulus?" You tell me.

"Build Back Better" and "Systemic Racism:" The Horror

A week or so ago, the Biden campaign said its agenda was COVID-19, the economy, climate change and systemic racism. Obviously they are serious about the systemic racism, because "Biden Fills Posts With Experts on Systemic Racism."

I must say that the article on systemic racism depressed me more than anything else out of the stolen election thingy. Even that Mark Malloch-Brown was all tied up with the Dominion/Smartmatic voting machine scandal. Mark Malloch-Brown, in case you didn't know, is a George Soros pal.

Can't we put the racism thing to sleep? Fifty-five years after the civil-rights acts? In a year when California voters -- deep blue California voters -- voted against reintroducing race policy in California government?

Well, no. And we know why. First, because Democratic bigwigs still thing that having a race panic in election years helps get out the black vote. Second, because fighting racism is part of the ruling class's virtue-signaling. That's the benefit of the #WeBelieve yard-signs. They tell us where the ruling class and its women supporters hang their hat on their virtue-signaling. Shall we run down the list?

• Black Lives Matter -- we fight racism
• Love is Love -- we fight homophobia
• Women's Rights are Human Rights -- we fight sexism
• Science is Real -- we fight climate change
• No Human is Illegal -- we fight xenophobia
• Kindness is Everything -- we are Good Little Girls

Just about covers the list, doesn't it. But, hey, why don't I get a word in edgewise?

• Black Lives Matter -- Hey, let's treat blacks as adults for a change
• Love is Love -- yes, but whatabout the children that LGBTs don't have
• Women's Rights are Human Rights -- Allows guys to say: get rid of it
• Science is Real -- If you think that you don't know science, darlin'
• No Human is Illegal -- Yeah, why not lower American wages
• Kindness is Everything -- I'm waiting...

I wonder if bearded @jack considers this bulleted list hate speech.

The thing about systemic racism is that our ruling class is going to keep hitting it until it flat out loses them three elections in a row, until even the dullest journalist on TV is embarrassed by it.

But now let's turn to "Build Back Better," which is the big program of the World Economic Forum, the chaps that meet at Davos, Magic Mountain-ville, every year. 

Yep. "To Build Back Better We Must Reinvent Capitalism. Here's How." Also called the Great Reset.

An inclusive and green recovery is vital if we are to create more resilient economies and a world in which business can thrive, not just now but long into the future.

Oh yeah. I'm totally convinced. Here are the main headings of Build Back Better. 

Resilience: "companies will need to establish a better balance between efficiency and resilience in everything from financial management to supply chain configuration." So, “Just-in-time” may be superseded by “just-in-case”.

No kidding! Hey, if there is any CEO that is not already concerned with "just-in-case" he should have his head examined! And fired on the spot.

Future growth: "The case for ‘green’ stimulus measures is clear: they are likely to deliver more jobs and higher (equitable) growth in the short-term, while reducing longer-term risks linked to climate change and biodiversity loss." 

Really. Wanna have a bet on this? And if you chaps are wrong, will you pony up the damages to the world economy from your green stimulus?

Future-proofing capitalism: "COVID-19 has exposed the fragility and societally negative outcomes of contemporary capitalist economies. It has strengthened the case for shifting to a more sustainable and inclusive model... Governments and regulators must intervene to ensure the costs of environmental and social damage are internalized by the companies responsible: profits cannot come at the expense of long-term societal resilience... If we don’t seize this opportunity to build back better – to reset and reinvent rather than 'return to normal' – systemic risks and vulnerabilities will continue to accumulate, making future shocks both more likely and more dangerous."

You can see what is going on here. To our globalist overlords, the COVID-19 event is a wonderful opportunity to impose their top-down agenda on us all. Because Resilience. Because Future Growth. Because Future-proofing Capitalism. It assumes that they know better than we do and they know better than the market.

Now, in my view, this gets it all wrong.

Resilience? I'd say that the biggest threat to resilience is the debt and the entitlement programs of the modern state. And the various policies that encourage individuals and businesses to load up on debt. Why? Because when I take out a debt -- or anyone takes out a debt -- I make a bet on the future, that everything will be copacetic, and I'll be able to service my loan. In other words, debt is the opposite of resilience. You think that governments are going to ease up on the debt any time soon?

Future growth? Don't you guys know that nobody knows what will power the future. That has been the lesson of the last 200 years. Nobody saw anything coming, not the textile revolution, not the steam revolution, not the electric revolution, not the personal transportation revolution, not the computer revolution, not the internet revolution. So what makes you guys think that "green" is the wave of the future? My nickel says that the wave of the future will be something completely unexpected.

Future-proofing capitalism? I agree, we need to make capitalism more robust, watch out for externalities, reset and reinvent. But  my nickel says that what really needs to happen is to unwind all the rigidities and rent-seekings that have been created by the century-long top-down political domination of the present ruling class. Only that is probably impossible because of Chantrill's Law, that government programs cannot work because you can never reform them. Not until they crash.

Hey, ruling classes gotta virtue signal -- as in systemic racism. Ruling classes gotta rent-seek -- as in Green New Deal. 

Otherwise how are they going to get the support they need from the voters, the Deplorables and the Bitter-clingers?

So what really saddens me is that, to coin a phrase, the ruling class has learned nothing and forgotten nothing from the Trump experience.

And that is a pity, because it is We The People that will be paying the butcher's bill for this nonsense.

Will The Diversity Gospel Take Over The World?

An acquaintance emailed today about the situation of white guys in STEM. What do you do, as "the 40-something engineer, with wife, house, car, kids" in the face of the current diversity madness, knowing you are "not of the appropriate gender or color?"

The simple answer, of course, is that you don't work for a big corporation, or any other place where they have time for piddling around with ruling-class inanities. You go work for a smaller company where they can't afford to have a DIE policy:  because "Get Woke, Go Broke."

But why? What is really going on with "diversity in the workplace" and diversity in movies, and the current panic on "systemic racism" that will be a major thrust in the Biden administration, along with climate change?

And will this diversity religion take over the world?

I think the diversity thing issues from the conceit of our ruling class, its self-image, that the educated elite is the virtue elite. As I am learning from The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca every ruling class lives on the narrative that it is the most valiant, or the Best and Brightest, or the most moral thing going, and that is why we peasants should bend the knee.

That is what the Deplorables and Bitter Clingers are about. Ruling-class virtue-signaling.

In my view the two big things the Biden administration proposes, climate change and systemic racism, illustrate the driving forces of any government and/or moral elite.

Government is about defending us from existential peril. In the past this has been the danger of the dawn raid from the tribe next door. Then it was the Nazis, then the Commies. But now, China aside, we really don't have an existential peril to arm against, the global elite has come up with climate change, to save us from runaway warming.

Then the moral agenda. What better than to save America from the notorious "systemic racists?" Only I think that government cannot help us on the moral front. Morality is a girl thing, what women enforce in the home and around the neighborhood. If it is enforced by government is it no longer morality but simple coercion, or, as our liberal friends used to say, "legislating morality."

But whatabout all the stereotype smashing, with the black astronomer in Interstellar, the endless superheroines bashing the living daylights out of big male thugs, or the brilliant female scientist? With the white male as the villain?

I just think that this stereotype bashing isn't going to work. My reason, of course, is deeply intellectual. We humans are, above all, storytellers. Why? Because stories are the way we remember: our life, the past, the birth of the nation, everything. Stories are the way we fill the world with meaning. And in those stories, as Carl Jung reminded us, we fill the cast with "archetypes:" the sacrificial hero, the cruel monster, the dumb jock, the good mother, the evil mother, the innocent girl, the nerdly boy.

Notice that in the original Star Wars all the characters were straight out of Jung's archetypes That's because director George Lucas was a fan of Joseph Campbell who was a follower of Jung. So all the characters are all straight out of mythology: Luke, the innocent boy learning to be brave; Hans Solo, the flawed but lovable rascal; Princess Leia, the beautiful maiden; Obi Wan, the wise teacher; Darth Vader, the satanic villain.

That is why Star Wars was such a mega success: because it connected deep into the human psyche. And that is why the later Star Wars movies are so mediocre: because they abandoned classic Jungian archetypes for lefty wokeness.

If you start turning the story upside down, putting people into roles that make no archetypical sense, you are going to lose your audience.

Now I think that what we need to do as a nation and a society is to refound our culture in the light of Jung's archetypes. So that men can be brave warriors, defending the hearth, and teaching the children to be worthy and honorable adults. So that women can be devoted carers, keeping the kids alive and ordering the local community, organizing learning pods and micro schools, returning to charitable work.

I think we need to stop the gender-bender madness, not because I think that gays should be strung up, but because I think that if you want to be creative with sex you should have to sign a release first, saying that if you screw up your life it is your fault, not society's fault.

Actually I think the same is true of all non-traditional role-playing. Sure, you can go and do all that, but before you go, you have to go through a briefing that educates you on the science of driving through the guard-rails.

The point of stories, whether in books or plays or movies, is to take the standard archetypes and mix them up. Sure, you can turn them upside down, but if you do that you should realize that you are doing screwball comedy; you are making a joke about archetypes.

Sure, there are blacks who can be rocket scientists, but right now it just ain't believable to cast them like that in movies. Now, a nerdly east-Asian: that would work. Nor does a girl superhero work: not unless she is some sort of a Kali, the destroyer of evil -- but not featuring kick-boxing stunts. Read this narrative about Kali:

In relation to Shiva, she [Kali] appears to play the opposite role from that of Parvati. Parvati calms Shiva, counterbalancing his antisocial or destructive tendencies; she brings him within the sphere of domesticity and with her soft glances urges him to moderate the destructive aspects of his tandava dance. Kali is Shiva's "wife" as it were, provoking him and encouraging him in his mad, antisocial, disruptive habits. It is never Kali who tames Shiva, but Shiva who must calm Kali.

See what is going on here? The good goddess Parvati calms Shiva; the evil goddess Kali provokes him.  Notice that neither Parvati or Kali are actors; they are whisperers, the power behind the throne. Recast your superheroines as Parvati and Kali and your stories will work -- all the way to the bank.

See, my belief is the the whole wokey phenomenon will crash and burn. I think it is a last desperate effort of our educated elite ruling class to maintain its relevance before it crashes and burns on the waste-heap of history.

I think that what we are going to do in the future decades is create new religions and politics that are based on the old archetypes, but reformulated to fit the modern age. I have attempted to imagine how this might look for men in my "Good Life" blog series where I propose the highest and best role for men is the Sacrificial Hero.

Somebody should do the same for women. Should they be Kalis or Parvatis?

Whither the Good Old USA?

There is really only one narrative out there about the long-term future of US politics. It is the one proposed by Judis and Teixeira in The Emerging Democratic Majority back in 2004. Their thesis is that the future belongs to Democrats because of women, minorities, young people, and the professionals.

Well, it's obvious isn't it? Even Pat Buchanan darkly foresees the end of the Trump era, as in:

1. Demography: the white fraction of the population is going down
2. Free stuff: Democrats are the party of government
3. Blue wall: "carrying every state that touches the Atlantic from Maine to North Carolina."

But. Here's Powerline with some post-election numbers. and a concerned analysis from The Guardian.

Biden’s win depended on suburbanites tired of Trump, who voted Republican down ballot and will certainly vote Republican in future elections... 

Most concerningly, Democrats hemorrhaged votes among non-white working-class voters. . . Even in the crucial states Biden was able to flip, Trump reduced Democratic margins in Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. These results should be setting off alarm bells among Democrats.

I guess my analysis -- which of course expresses my hopes -- is that race is not as important as we are carefully taught to believe, Black Lives Matter. My belief is that national origin matters for a generation or two, but then class takes over.

Class in the sense of my reductive Three Peoples theory and Curtis Yarvin's Three Layers theory. In this theory the electorate divides up:

1. Educated Gentry: Democrat, because we are qualified to direct traffic (we want power)
2. Commoners: Republican, because we want to live our own lives (not that interested in power)
3. Clients: Democrat, because we want the powerful to protect us

Obviously, the genius of Trump was to create a class consciousness among ordinary Commoner Americans and it seems, from the Guardian, that he is making headway among non-white Commoners as well as white Commoners.

However, let us not forget Michael Barone's theory:

The Republican Party appeals to “typical Americans” as understood at a given time, and the Democratic Party represents a coalition of “out-groups.” 

Now do you see why Dems are still playing the race card? They want everyone to think of themselves as an "oppressed" out-group. But Deplorables are not an out-group. They are "white oppressors."

Nor should we think of the parties as hopelessly out of touch.

[B]oth parties have adapted, swiftly or haltingly, to shifting opinion and emerging issues, to economic change and cultural currents, to demographic flux.

Then there is the actual party history in the US House of Representatives over the last century:

Well. So if you figure that Judis and Teixeira made their predictions back in 2000, I'd say that so far, nothing has happened. Indeed, you might say that the House of Representatives has been going slowly GOP ever since 1937. Or you might say that there was a Dem wave that lasted from 1900 to the 1960s and ever since the opposite has been true.

OK. Here is my fearless prediction. I think that we have in our future a battle royal between the educated Gentry and the Commoners:

The educated Gentry wants the climate change grift because it means tons of power and jobs for educated experts and administrators and it wants continued intersectional politics because it encourages Americans to think of themselves as members of "out groups."

 The Commoners want ordinary economic growth because they want to wive and thrive. But don't touch their Medicare and Social Security, you Green New Dealers.

The point about Donald Trump is that he found the way to energize the ordinary Commoners with the notion of appealing to them directly as typical Americans and boosting economic growth -- for Americans. No professional Republican had figured out how to do that before, except maybe Ronald Reagan.

I think the place to look is the white professional elite. Do they really want to keep with the Woke movement and its cancel culture and its flirtation with socialism that might easily turn on them as a privileged and exploitative upper-class, bearded @jack?

Also, I would say, in the short range, the Democrats seem to be divided between the moderate Democrats that represent swing districts and the ideologues that represent safe districts. Just sayin'.

I don't think that Republicans are similarly divided right now.

My only problem is that if Trump wins the cheating wars, and continues in office till 2025, the country will be so fed up with Trump that Dems will win it all decisively in 2024, White House and Senate and House. 

And then you ain't seen nuttin´ yet.

It's a Bit Late to Start Condemning Beheadings, Globalists

There's a piece over at Quillette by writer Brian Stewart that approves of French President Macron for taking a stand against beheadings of secular Frenchies by Muslim religious fanatics.

Pointing to France’s tradition of secularism, known as laïcité, Macron has insisted that it “is the glue of a united France,” which must be defended against Islamism’s “conscious, theorized, politico-religious project” to subvert the freedom of the republic.

No doubt. and I was just reading Gaetano Mosca in The Ruling Class. He says that in a multi-sect society the ruling class has to develop a unifying ideology so that, e.g. in France, you can be a good Muslim and a good Frenchie.

Unfortunately the time to have done that would have been 20-30 years ago. Instead the French ruling class, like ruling classes elsewhere in the West, have tended to be patronizing towards "victim groups," permitting them to develop ideologies of separation that they would never permit in ordinary middle-class Westerners.

And we know the reason why. Because condoning the primitive tribalist ideologies of the victims has been great for the ruling class on the voting front. Peoples that have not yet succeeded in finding a place in the city's market economy tend to hunker down in sub-national identities, and they protect themselves from the larger society with urban gangs. The job of a ruling class worth its privileges and its self-regard is to encourage by all means the ethnic group to identify with the nation rather than the tribe. 

But not our ruling class. Because, for the time being, they could be the champions of the oppressed, the "allies" if you like, and rule by dividing ordinary Americans.

So it's a bit late for President Macron suddenly wake up and say: Wow, these beheadings have got to stop!

Why, that's almost as radical as a Democratic Party leader getting up and saying "this mostly peaceful protesting has to stop." Yeah. We are a few years away from that happening.

It would be funny, a topic for late-night comedy shows, if it weren't so serious. Imagine a skit about the global elite running around turning up their noses at "patriotism" and "nationalism" and sneering at the populist nationalists from France's Le Pen and Britain's Farage and Hungary's Orbán, and Germany's Meuthen, and the US's Trump.

(Interesting: I didn't even know the name of the leader of Germany's Alternativ für Deutschland. I wonder why, MSM?)

Then all of a sudden the ruling class wakes up one day and decide sthat this beheading thing, that it has basically condoned for decades, Has Got To Stop!

The problem with history is that it is all one step forward and two steps back. And if you are lucky, you finally get a step ahead. That's because your average ruling class just inherited the job from its fathers and it really has no clue how its forefathers created the regime so many moons ago.

Here's a radical idea, you educated-evolved-compassionate ruling class. Start praising the Nation. Start praising the Founders (of whatever nation); start encouraging the immigrants to join the cult of the nation. And stop being snobby globalists meeting up in Magic-Mountain-ville in the Swiss Alps to teach the rubes how to "build back better."

Here's the reason. A good ruling class is always sensitive to the passions of the masses. Its glorious beribboned members dripping with knightly stars and magnificent awards want to know what the plebs are thinking and what is bothering them. Because, after all, the ruling class, every ruling class, lives on the conceit that it knows what is good for the country -- and the world! And it cannot have an idea about this unless it is pretty knowledgeable about what is actually going on in Fly-over Country or the banlieue of Paris.

But you can see what a useless ruling class would propose to do. Hey! I know! Let's get rid of Trump by fixing the mail-in votes in Pennsylvania. That will give us a fabulous mandate to Build Back Better.

Not!

Hey. You know what? For the last four years the US had a president that encouraged Americans to identify as Americans, and he encouraged the marginalized -- you know who they are -- to join the party and be proud of belonging to America. Because the American people are the best people in the world and America is the best country in the world and the best is yet to come.

Golly. You would think that Donald Trump had spent the last ten years reading, learning, and inwardly digesting The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca. But that would be impossible, because Orange Man Bad.

What Will Make Our Next Ruling Class Special

Here am I fizzing along with Gaetano Mosca's The Ruling Class and writing it all up here. And one of his aperćus is that every ruling class lives -- and dies -- on its specialness. Because that is the basis for its right to rule.

The special people are the people that get to rule. All over the world.

Back in the day, of course, the ruling class was simply the warriors. The best warriors were the ruling class, period. I suppose that when we get to the feudal era we get not just the warrior virtues, but blood and lineage which the ruling class advertises as a marker of their superior character and wealth and power. 

But whatabout our own ruling class? What do they advertise to signify their specialness and their right to rule? The answer is obvious. It is a whole cluttered drawing room full of conceit.

What our rulers know is that they are

more educated, more evolved, more caring, more inclusive, more intelligent, more knowledgeable, more kind, more scientific, more virtuous, more compassionate, more honest, more open, more empathizing, more involved, more sharing, more encouraging, more apologizing, more forgiving 

than the common run of deplorables and bitter-clingers. (I got a lot of these from the "Be the one to" website).

And their clients, the "oppressed peoples" are innocents.

No really! Go up and read over that list again. Is it not true that your liberal friends really believe all that?

That is why I think that our liberal friends are making a strategic mistake with censoring social media, with canceling racist-sexist-homophobes, with pursuing Donald Trump for four years, with stealing elections, with nominating a man in his dotage and a woman who made it up the old-fashioned way.

The reason is obvious: such low-life behavior completely negates the virtue-signaling PR. And it signals weakness.

A truly educated-evolved-caring-inclusive-intelligent-kind, etc. person does not censor, cancel, fake-dossier, fake-impeach, or steal. Not nohow. And not just because it is wrong, not just because it is beneath a truly educated-evolved-caring etc. person of high estate. But because it signals weakness.

Should I repeat that? Yes I think I should.

When you censor, cancel, fake-dossier, fake-impeach or steal elections you are signalling weakness. As in "they're a weak lot, some of them in Europe, you know. Weak. Feeble."

Now I believe that the true markers of specialness are the three virtues of @nntaleb.

Never virtue-signal 

Never rent-seek 

You must start your own business

Since I don't want to be sexist, I have also included three virtues for women

Never virtue-signal 

Never say "I can't even!" 

You must learn to forgive

As opposed to what I regard as our ruling class's real markers.

We are all virtue-signallers 

We are all rent-seekers 

We never quite got to start our own business

Am-I-right or am-I-right? 

Yep. My fearless prediction is that our next ruling class will live or die on the @nntaleb virtues. 

Because it's the only thing left.

Ten Reasons Why Our Liberal Ruling Class is in Trouble

In The Ruling Class Gaetano Mosca writes that a ruling class needs certain qualities in itself as a group and in its individuals.

1. It should be united. 
2. It should be careful about unrest in the masses and respond to it. 
3. It should be able to adapt to changes, in wealth, knowledge, etc. 
4. It should be excellent in the virtues of the age. 
5. It should be seen to be excellent in the virtues of the age. 
6. And so on.  

 You can see that our liberal friends are not doing too well on the ruling-class virtue front. But let us count the specifics. Just to help them out.

1. A good Ruling Class does not steal elections; it does not need to.
2. A good Ruling Class does not even appear to steal elections; such behavior is beneath it.
3. A good Ruling Class does not call the masses "deplorables" or "bitter-clingers." It is the benevolent lord of all it surveys.
4. A good Ruling Class does not legislate a "Great Society" and instrument it with social science so it can praise itself and then find out that it made things worse, and then do nothing about it. (Charles Murray in Losing Ground)
5. A good Ruling Class does not call Charles Murray a racist for pointing out in The Bell Curve that the modern era benefits the "cognitive elite" and that blacks, that exhibit lower than normal IQs, would likely not do too well compared to people with high IQs.
6. A good Ruling Class does not ignore Charles Murray in his Coming Apart when he writes:  that the top 20 percent of whites in America is doin' fine with great careers and merger marriages; that the middle 50 percent of whites is doin' so-so; that the bottom 30 percent of men don't work much and the women don't marry much.
7. A good Ruling Class does not hang the white working class out to dry for half a century.
8. A good Ruling Class does not let blacks molder away in crumbling, crime-ridden cities for half a century.
9. A good Ruling Class does not censor the opposition with its tame tech lords. It does not need to.
10. A good Ruling Class does not let its supporters riot in the cities. It would be beneath such crudity.

I could go on. My point is that a good Ruling Class does not have to cheat. It does not make life great for itself and its supporters at the cost of real decline in the welfare of people outside the Ruling Class. It allows a little fun and frolic from the masses, because it wants to know what the masses think and feel, the better to rule them.

And another thing. A good Ruling Class knows when it is in trouble, and knows what to do and does it. It does not dig the hole deeper.