In his speech before the 1996 Republican National Convention, in a fit of what would have to pass for red meat, Vice Presidential Nominee Jack Kemp complained, ^The Democratic Party isn^t democratic anymore. It^s elitist.^

It^s a pity William Henry wasn^t around to tee off on that one. It^s a pity also that this twice Pulitzer Prize-winning critic died a scant few months before the 1994 debut of his best, most inflammatory work, In Defense of Elitism.

Though the prestige of some works are clearly helped along by their creators^ early demise, allowing the work to stand unobscured by the later antics of the author ^- compare 1984 with Solzhenitsyn^s quickly fading Gulag Archipelago ^- it can cut the other way as well. Exhibit A in just how cruel the Reaper can be: Instead of escaping the dense thicket of criticism and climbing to the top of the pedestal of Very Important Books, this flawed but fascinating tome somehow managed to get lost down Orwell^s memory hole. This author would not have even heard of the work if the surrogate for the book tour -^ one Doug Glant, historian and CEO -- wasn^t a good personal acquaintance.

I^m rather glad he is.

II.

>From the back cover:

[S]ince modern America took shape at the end of World War II, nearly every great domestic policy debate has revolved around the poles of elitism and egalitarianism .. [E]galitarianism has been winning far too thoroughly...

We have foolishly embraced the unexamined notions that everyone is pretty much alike (and worse, should be), that self-fulfillment is more important than objective achievement, that the common man is always right, that a good and just society should be far more concerned with succoring its losers than with honoring and encouraging our winners.

The thesis of the book is simply that the above is bad and that ^we,^ the American people, ought to knock it off. Henry attempts to document America^s raging egalitarianism and set in opposition a vigorous defense of elitism.

The catch is that he attempts to do this as a liberal Democrat and man of the Left. Seriously. Readers may wonder how a man from the party of William Jennings Bryan, FDR, Aldai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, George McGovern, Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton can speak out in favor of that liberal bugbear, elitism? Creative dissonance? Schizophrenia? Selective hypocrisy? Or is there something more?

Henry thinks that, in defending elitism, he is rescuing the mind of liberalism from its heart and jiggers his definition thusly. So he can deplore ^those who consider themselves superior by birth or theology^ and even insist that, in some sense, ^egalitarianism has done a great good for American society.^ Nevertheless, he still insists that the kind of elitism he admires -^ elitism based on intelligence and competition ^- ^will do more for character than coddling ever will.^ His kind of elitism, ^hates tenure, seniority and the whole union ethos that contends that workers are interchangeable and their performances essentially equivalent.^

So how does that make him any different than a secular conservative or a libertarian? We^ll come back to that after wading into his diagnosis of the American egalitarian morass.

III.

In Defense^s survey of the American scene picks apart -- chapter by chapter ^- perceived egalitarian threats to elitism: multiculturalism, racial quotas, feminism, permissiveness, the failure of public education, and easy access to higher ed. Though the list sounds like just another laundry list of right wing complaint, Henry proves a nimble and incisive critic.

To wit, he notes the mass of legal and illegal Mexican immigration and quotes Chicano activists who replace ^we shall overcome^ with ^we shall overwhelm.^ The coming demographic shift ^ from white to a mix of Asians, Latinos, blacks and whites; but mostly Latinos ^- he sees as a very large problem on the American horizon. Unlike his right-wing counterparts, however, he does not think this tidal wave can be stopped, only directed.

Sounds grand, but there^s just one problem: multiculturalism.

^Traditional judgements about what America has meant to its own people and to the world get radically altered when someone new does the interpreting, from a different perspective and often with a chip on the shoulder. ... Historians and cultural scholars who see the American experience as the world^s most successful experiment in governance and creativity are being jostled aside by those with a grudge against the past and present,^ Henry says.

One piece of personal anecdotal evidence that he might be onto something: When I recently took a course in American history at a local community college, a tenured professor insisted, with a straight face, that America did not win the Revolutionary War. I was shocked once and doubly shocked that no one was willing to challenge such tripe. Finally, I could take it no longer:

^Dr. D,^ I asked after thrusting my right arm into the air.

^Yes, Mr. Lott?^

^Help me get this straight. I^m not sure I understand this correctly.^

^Certainly.^

^Are we currently under the crown?^

^No.^

^Were we under the crown shortly after the Revolutionary War ended?^

^No, Mr. Lott.^

^So we won, right?^

^Well if you want to put it that way.^

My prof and many activists, academics and public school teachers quoted by Henry, tend to see in the history of America a fundamentally unjust nation -^ a city on a scrap heap -^ full of slavery, racism, sexism and the like. Their solution: Poison America^s view of herself and downplay her accomplishments; couch all progress in terms of class warfare, the rich always getting richer on the backs of the poor; elevate ^diversity^ and ^tolerance^ to the hierarchy of values; claim that Western and American innovations were all stolen from primitive civilizations or from slaves.

Henry believes, ^This anti-assimilation posture, if taken seriously, would lead to an ungovernably fissile nation.^

IV.

But I return to the question, How can this be the work of a man of the left?

Let^s pull out the most singularly offensive lines from the third through sixth chapters and examine. They are: 3) ^Perhaps.. in a society sans affirmative action, somewhat fewer blacks than whites would go to college, fewer would become lawyers or doctors, fewer would run large corporations. Would it matter? Arguably not...^; 4) ^You could eliminate every woman writer, painter, and composer from the caveman era to the present moment and not significantly deform the course of Western culture.^; 5) ^[E]arly Calvinists left us a residue of acute perception. In general, the world is a rational place in which winners deserve to win and losers deserve to lose.^; 6) ^The same caveat [^worthless^] applies to all ideologically based and impractical studies, like the feminist dialectics in the humanities that one female Columbia professor of my acquaintance dismisses as ^clit lit^, or Stanford^s Black Hair as Culture and History.^

Though all of the above assertions are couched in liberal caveats, I yank them out of their contexts to make a point: These statements spring from profoundly anti-liberal (in the modern sense) impulses. And yet Henry clings for dear life to his liberal Democrat credentials. Is he justified in doing so?

If by modern liberalism we mean liberalism within this century then the answer is yes. Liberalism circa, say, 1956 was economically egalitarian but intellectually elitist; wanting to extend the franchise to all but unwilling to give it away for free. Henry does not love a progressive tax system or a sizeable welfare state but he^s willing to live with both so long as they don^t become the tail that wags the dog. He quite often speaks of people emulating their ^betters,^ a term so long fallen from usage that this critic was a bit shocked to see it resurrected. What Henry^s progressive elitism does with feminists is particularly instructive.

V.

In the fourth chapter, ^Why Can^t a Man Be More Like a Woman?^, Henry first takes note of historical circumstances that once held women back. They were to stay home with and raise the children so jobs were not open to them. Even when some employment did open up, it did so slowly and sometimes the pay between men and women was unequal. But, ^having said all that, a dispassionate observer must still find it curious that women, a literal majority of the American population and holders of a large majority of its private wealth, have managed to get themselves classified as a minority.^

He then rolls out the feminist wrecking ball.

The glass ceiling is largely a myth and, to the extent that it^s not, an important factor is not considered by equal pay advocates. Women tend to take much more time off than men to raise children (duh!). He^s all for equal work for equal pay but that^s not what the ^mommy track^ is about. In ^no-nonsense economic terms, women tend to be less committed to their careers.^

Much of sexual harassment, he says, amounts to special pleading; women being offended and suing over stupid little things that would get a man laughed out of the courtroom. They have, ^confused legitimate grievances such as sexual harassment and the range of offences labeled date rape with mere expressions of opinion that they do not happen to share.^

After tackling many more thorny issues including feminist academic bilge and women in politics, he moves on to answer Freud^s consternation of what women want with such surprising clarity that the matter should now be settled:

^The answer of course depends on which women and in what country one does the asking. In China, women probably want an end to the prejudice that leads to vastly more abortions and infant deaths of girls than of boys. In India, they probably want an end to the dowry scams that treat daughters of marriageable age as burdens that families must buy their way out of. In Muslim Africa, some of them surely want an end to the genital mutilation of small girls to insure their lack of interest in sex and consequent marital fidelity -^ and, of course, an end to that kind of patronizingly pro-third world scholarship that attempts to explain this butchery as mere cultural custom, not to be meddled with by outsiders....^

VI.

If most great books are really about something other than what they^re sold as, then In Defense of Elitism is really a rousing, cranky and occasionally flawed defense of America against all comers. When he constantly invokes ^universal values^ one has little trouble replacing ^universal^ with ^American.^ Europe is only rarely invoked as a corrective and even then only halfheartedly.

Though Henry deplores, ^tribalism^ he denounces multiculturalism not only on elitist but also on what can only be called nationalist grounds. Feminists stick so deeply in his craw primarily because they assert that America was and continues to be an unjust society. By his criteria, America is ^a superior culture.^

He worries, along with a whole host of others, that if the United States succumbs to the egalitarians, it may not remain so for long.

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Jeremy Lott is senior editor for Spintech Magazine.