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T. S. Eliot, Populist by Robert C. Koons | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Eliot drew a fruitful distinction between the upper class and the elite. Class is inherited from one’s ancestors and is thus tied to family and to a place. Membership in the elite, in contrast, is acquired through the mastery of certain subjects and techniques, typically in selective cosmopolitan universities. As Eliot argues, class is inherently conservative and provides a rich soil for literary and artistic creativity, while a society dominated by elites loses the continuity of inherited tradition and suffers from a sterile obsession with artistic novelty.
"Class is inherited from one’s ancestors and is thus tied to family and to a place. Membership in the elite, in contrast, is acquired through the mastery of certain subjects and techniques, typically in selective cosmopolitan universities."
ReplyDeleteTo a place: Born in St. Louis, attended college in Boston, settled in London. It is well that he skipped the selective cosmopolitan universities and got his schooling at trade schools, namely Harvard and Oxford.
Ah, but his family had roots in England. He could argue that he had just returned to the scene of the crime.
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