Survey: Two-Thirds Of Elites Say There’s Too Much Freedom In America

In The American Crack-up, David Samuels writes, “As the fearful servants of a fearful oligarchy, America’s elites don’t trust the people they rule. It’s no surprise, then, that one thing that most of the social innovations of the past five years — from open borders to the new language of race to the attack on meritocracy — have in common is that no one voted for them.”

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Americans now find themselves living in an oligarchy administered day-to-day by institutional bureaucracies that move in lock-step with each other, enforcing a set of ideologically-driven top-down imperatives that seemingly change from week-to-week and cover nearly every subject under the sun.

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Today, power flows from the top down, from a set of fantastically wealthy billionaires, to a national administrative class, and to a new layer of non-profit administrators, foundation executives and NGOs, which in turn employ a floating class of hundreds of thousands of grant-makers, organisers, case-workers and protesters who serve as the shock troops of the Democratic Party. In this role, they regiment the party’s identity-driven interest groups while receiving large amounts of funding from the billionaire class and the Federal government — thereby enabling the Party to serve as the broker between the oligarchs and the “disenfranchised” poor.”

Survey: Two-Thirds Of Elites Say There’s Too Much Freedom In America

By: Evita Duffy-Alfonso, The Federalist, January 19, 2024:

The nation’s ruling class holds deeply authoritarian opinions widely divorced from the rest of the American electorate, finds a survey out this week. It found nearly 60 percent of American “elites” think there is too much individual freedom in America. Meanwhile, nearly 60 percent of registered voters have the exact opposite opinion, reporting the United States has too much top-down control, limiting liberty.

The study, titled “Them Vs. U.S,” defined the American “elite” as “having a postgraduate degree, a household income of more than $150,000 annually, and living in a zip code with more than 10,000 people per square mile.” Such people account for about 1 percent of Americans. The study also examined a sub-sample of the 1 percent who graduated from Ivy League schools or other name-brand institutions such as Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.

The study from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity found ruling class opinions on climate policies were particularly harsh and despotic. More than two-thirds of the 1 percent support rationing vital energy and food sources in an attempt to control the globe’s weather. That number jumped to nearly 90 percent among the Ivy Leaguers. Around two-thirds of normal registered voters, however, oppose rationing vital resources.

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Limiting food and water consumption is a serious proposition to global leaders. For example, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, an environmentalist organization of city leaders across the globe, has proposed annihilating meat and dairy consumption by 2030.

“An astonishing 72% of the Elites – including 81% of the Elites who graduated from the top universities – favor banning gas cars,” the study authors continued. “And majorities of elites would ban gas stoves, non-essential air travel, SUVs, and private air conditioning.”

Elites’ view of other elites is very different from regular registered voters’ view of elites. On the education front, “Two-thirds (67%) [of the 1 percent] say teachers and other educational professionals should decide what children are taught rather than letting parents decide.” Only 38 percent of registered voters felt the same.

“About six of ten elites have a favorable opinion of the so-called talking professions—lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, and journalists,” wrote the study authors. Additionally, “In stark contrast to the rest of America, 70% of the Elites trust the government to ‘do the right thing most of the time.’”

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