Peritus

More Sam Francis on James Burnham (from The Social Pathologist):

The twentieth century, for the United States as well as for the rest of the world, has been an age of revolution of far more profound transformational effect than any the modern world has ever experienced. Perhaps not since neolithic times has mankind undergone simultaneous changes in economic, social, political, and intellectual relationships of such far-reaching consequences ... Just as in the mass corporations a new elite of professional managers emerged that replaced the traditional entrepreneurial or bourgeois elite of businessmen, so in the state also a new elite of professionally trained managers or bureaucrats developed that challenged and generally became dominant over the older political elites of aristocrats and amateur politicians who occupied the formal offices of government. Both in the economy and the state, organizations began to undertake functions for which a smaller scale of organization was not prepared and which the traditional elites of aristocratic and bourgeois society were unable to perform. A similar process occurred in labor unions, professional associations, churches, educational institutions, military organizations, and the organs of mass communication and cultural expression. In all sectors of twentieth-century industrial society, the growth of mass organizations brought with it an expansion of functions and power, a new elite wedded by its material interests and psychic and intellectual preparation to continuing expansion, and a metamorphosis of the organizations themselves as well as of the social and political orders they dominated.

The bane of my existence are "experts," consultants, administrators, petty bureaucrats. They have ruined the university, the church, and politics. This is why I don't put Vatican II down to individual popes: if anything it showed the complete inability of one person to manage a process that proceeded inexorably by its own rules and own logic. Just when infallible tyrants were actually required, they caved. They have been replaced by slick hucksters, who combine a firm belief in the inerrancy of their own judgement with an uncanny ability to bend in the wind. Think Tony Blair, who would be my candidate for Anti-Christ, should someone need to be named on the spot.

The New Elite