The Intellectual Elite and the Peter Principle

There are two very interesting events happening now, that show the inner workings of the "Elite" progressives.  Christine O'Donnell has been widely mocked for saying in a debate that the First Amendment does not discuss separation of church and state, and Sarah Palin has been widely mocked for saying that the original Tea Party occurred in 1773, not 1776.

It appears that both O'Donnell and Palin are entirely correct, and their critics have exposed themselves as ignorant of history and the Constitution, not to mention foolish and ill mannered.

Remember, these critics are supposed to be the "Best And Brightest", at least that's what we're told.  We shoud bow to the superior intelligent of our would-be overlords, whether they're right or wrong.

Oooooooh kaaaaay.

This got be thinking, because it looks like a failure this big doesn't happen by accident.  The common thread linking the critics is that they are highly-credentialed products of an extremely hierarchical, bureaucratic institution (the US education system).  There are well known principles for analyzing how these institutions function, the most important of which is the Peter Principle:

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence.

Tenure ensures that the Peter Principle is deeply embedded throughout the credentialing institutions.  We need to be careful with out definitions here: most members who have reached their level of incompetence are in fact pretty competent in a narrow field of expertise.  The problem is everything else outside that field, particularly when you apply the dynamic of tenure.

The Professorate is essentially a Medieval Guild, and an applicant typically can be black-balled by any current member in good standing, for any reason at all.  As politics has taken an increasing importance in these decisions over the last half century, you have a selection for a very particular set of political beliefs acting in a Darwinian manner at Universities across the land.

But remember, these political beliefs are not the professor's special area of expertise (unless he's a professor of political science), and so he's unlikely to be able to call on any great insight or knowledge.  Indeed, as more extreme left ideas become the norm in the Academy, the views are likely to be much goofier than normal.

This is what an aspiring young accademic finds.  And so if he's ambitious, he learns to parot a set of astonishingly stupid ideas (which are entirely unrelated to his field of expertise but which are absolutely critical to his getting tenure).  The Peter Principle strikes him before he lands his first paying job.

Most never get tenure, of course, and find themselves in the educated professions (like the media).  They carry all the baggage with them, and what we're seeing with the O'Donnel and Palin episodes is that they're letting us see that ignorance, as the Internet (hello Twitter) allows them to serve up a heaping display of that ignorance to the rest of us.

It's really quite astonishing, that they'd do this to themselves.  But they never really had to show that they were smart.  Just compliant.