{"id":9371,"date":"2016-07-01T15:41:17","date_gmt":"2016-07-01T22:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=9371"},"modified":"2016-07-01T15:41:17","modified_gmt":"2016-07-01T22:41:17","slug":"anti-brexit-elites-arent-the-ones-who-suffer-from-their-policies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/anti-brexit-elites-arent-the-ones-who-suffer-from-their-policies\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Brexit Elites Aren\u2019t the Ones Who Suffer from Their Policies"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n

F<\/span>ollowing the Brexit, Europe may witness even more plebiscites against the undemocratic European Union throughout the continent.<\/p>\n

The furor of ignored Europeans against their union is not just directed against rich and powerful government elites per se, or against the flood of mostly young male migrants from the war-torn Middle East. The rage also arises from the hypocrisy of a governing elite that never seems to be subject to the ramifications of its own top-down policies. The bureaucratic class that runs Europe from Brussels and Strasbourg too often lectures European voters on climate change, immigration, politically correct attitudes about diversity, and the constant need for more bureaucracy, more regulations, and more redistributive taxes.
\n<\/p>\n

But Euro-managers are able to navigate around their own injunctions, enjoying private schools for their children; generous public pay, retirement packages and perks; frequent carbon-spewing jet travel; homes in non-diverse neighborhoods; and profitable revolving-door careers between government and business.<\/p>\n

The Western elite classes, both professedly liberal and conservative, square the circle of their privilege with politically correct sermonizing. They romanticize the distant \u201cother\u201d \u2014 usually immigrants and minorities \u2014 while condescendingly lecturing the middle and working classes, often the losers in globalization, about their lack of sensitivity.<\/p>\n

On this side of the Atlantic, President Obama has developed a curious habit of talking down to Americans about their supposedly reactionary opposition to rampant immigration, affirmative action, multiculturalism, and political correctness \u2014 most notably in his caricatures of the purported \u201cclingers\u201d of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Yet Obama seems uncomfortable when confronted with the prospect of living out what he envisions for others. He prefers golfing with celebrities to bowling. He vacations in tony Martha\u2019s Vineyard rather than returning home to his Chicago mansion. His travel entourage is royal and hardly green. And he insists on private prep schools for his children rather than enrolling them in the public schools of Washington, D.C., whose educators he so often shields from long-needed reform.<\/p>\n

In similar fashion, grandees such as Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos do not live what they profess. They often lecture supposedly less sophisticated Americans on their backward opposition to illegal immigration. But both live in communities segregated from those they champion in the abstract.<\/p>\n

The Clintons often pontificate about \u201cfairness\u201d but somehow managed to amass a personal fortune of more than $100 million by speaking to and lobbying banks, Wall Street profiteers, and foreign entities. The pay-to-play rich were willing to brush aside the insincere, pro forma social-justice talk of the Clintons and reward Hillary and Bill with obscene fees that would presumably result in lucrative government attention.<\/p>\n

Consider the recent Orlando tragedy for more of the same paradoxes. The terrorist killer, Omar Mateen \u2014 a registered Democrat, proud radical Muslim, and occasional patron of gay dating sites \u2014 murdered 49 people and wounded even more in a gay nightclub. His profile and motive certainly did not fit the elite narrative that unsophisticated right-wing American gun owners were responsible because of their support for gun rights.<\/p>\n

No matter. The Obama administration and much of the media refused to attribute the horror in Orlando to Mateen\u2019s self-confessed radical Islamist agenda. Instead, they blamed the shooter\u2019s semi-automatic .223 caliber rifle and a purported climate of hate toward gays.<\/p>\n

Many Americans were bewildered by the logic. It\u2019s reasonable to conclude that the shooter was conflicted over his religion\u2019s strict prohibitions about his lifestyle \u2014 and especially the American brand of tolerance as exemplified by the nightclub. Mateen\u2019s immigrant father from Afghanistan is a crude homophobe who had praised the murderous Taliban. Mateen somehow had cleared all background checks and on at least two occasions had been interviewed and dismissed by the FBI.<\/p>\n

In sum, elites ignored the likely causes of the Orlando shooting: the appeal of ISIS-generated hatred to some young, second-generation radical Muslim men living in Western societies, and the politically correct inability of Western authorities to short-circuit that clear-cut connection.<\/p>\n

Instead, the establishment all but blamed Middle America for supposedly being anti-gay and pro-gun.<\/p>\n

In both the U.S. and Britain, such politically correct hypocrisy is superimposed on highly regulated, highly taxed, and highly governmentalized economies that are becoming ossified and stagnant.<\/p>\n

The tax-paying middle classes, who lack the romance of the poor and the connections of the elite, have become convenient whipping boys of both in order to leverage more government social programs and to assuage the guilt of the elites who have no desire to live out their utopian theories in the flesh.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s version of the British antidote to elite hypocrisy is the buffoonish populist Donald Trump. Like the architects of Brexit, he arose not from what he was for, but what he said he was against.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/National Review Online Following the Brexit, Europe may witness even more plebiscites against the undemocratic European Union throughout the continent. The furor of ignored Europeans against their union is not just directed against rich and powerful government elites per se, or against the flood of mostly young male migrants from the war-torn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[18,282,203,59,23,46],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2r9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11867,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-why-are-the-western-middle-classes-so-angry\/","url_meta":{"origin":9371,"position":0},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson: Why are the Western middle classes so angry?","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 13, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Bozeman Daily What is going on with the unending Brexit drama, the aftershocks of Donald Trump\u2019s election and the \u201cyellow vests\u201d protests in France? 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AVIGNON, France\u00a0\u2014 The Rhone River Valley in southern France is a storybook marriage of high technology, traditional vineyards,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "France"","block_context":{"text":"France","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/france\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11616,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/strategika-issue-56-the-defense-of-europe\/","url_meta":{"origin":9371,"position":3},"title":"Strategika Issue 56: The Defense of Europe","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 17, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"European Defense Please read a new essay by my colleague, Angelo M. Codevilla\u00a0in Strategika. Europe was never a full partner in its own defense. The very question\u2014Will Europe ever fully partner with the U.S., or will the European Union and NATO continue to downplay the necessity of military readiness?\u2014is no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Europe\"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/tag\/europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11660,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/strategika-issue-56-the-defense-of-europe-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":9371,"position":4},"title":"Strategika Issue 56: The Defense of Europe","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 15, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"European Defense Please read a new essay by my colleague, Angelo M. Codevilla\u00a0in Strategika. Europe was never a full partner in its own defense. The very question\u2014Will Europe ever fully partner with the U.S., or will the European Union and NATO continue to downplay the necessity of military readiness?\u2014is no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Europe"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10934,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rethinking-the-geography-of-power\/","url_meta":{"origin":9371,"position":5},"title":"Rethinking the Geography of Power","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 1, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Where the seats of power are located matters. Given the populist revolt in the United States and Europe against the so-called global elite, it is time to refigure the geography of governmental and transnational power. Take the United Nations. Much of the international body\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "United Nations"","block_context":{"text":"United Nations","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/united-nations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9371"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9372,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9371\/revisions\/9372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}