4.3 • 2.9K Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2018
⏱️ 40 minutes
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0:00.0 | This is GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Farid Zikarriya. |
0:11.0 | On today's show, barricades, fires and riots in the heart of Paris. |
0:18.0 | Are we witnessing a 21st century lame Isahabla? |
0:23.0 | And the Brits have a major Brexit milestone on Tuesday. |
0:29.0 | Will Parliament vote down the deal that Prime Minister May negotiated with the European Union? |
0:34.0 | If so, what happens? I have a terrific panel on it all. |
0:41.0 | Also, President Trump says he doesn't believe his own administration's report on climate change. |
0:48.0 | How can that be? |
0:51.0 | Michael Lewis tells us about the war on government agencies being waged by the men and women who lead them. |
1:00.0 | But first, here's my take. |
1:02.0 | The death of George H. W. Bush has occasioned a fair amount of nostalgia for the old American establishment of which Bush was undoubtedly a prominent member. |
1:11.0 | It's also provoked a heated debate among commentators about that establishment whose membership was determined largely by bloodlines and connections. |
1:20.0 | You had to be a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant to ascend to almost any position of power in America until the early 1960s. |
1:28.0 | Surely there is nothing good to say about a system that was so discriminatory toward everyone else. |
1:35.0 | Actually, there is. For all its faults, and it had many, it was often horribly bigoted in some places segregationist and almost always exclusionary, at its best, the old wasp aristocracy did have a sense of modesty, humility and public spiritiness that seems largely absent in today's elite. |
1:56.0 | Many of Bush's greatest moments, his handling of the fall of communism, his decision not to occupy Iraq after the First Gulf War, his acceptance of tax increases to close the deficit, were marked by restraint and ability to do the right thing despite enormous pressure to pander to public opinion. |
2:16.0 | But, and here is the problem, it is likely that these wasp virtues flowed from the nature of that old elite. The aristocracy was quite secure in its power and position, so it could afford to think about the country's fate in broad terms and look out for the longer term, rising above self-interest because its own interest was assured. |
2:38.0 | Now, if you think at this point I'm painting a fantasy of a world that never existed, let me give you one vivid example. On its maiden voyage, the Titanic's first class cabins were filled with the Forbes 400 of the age. |
2:51.0 | As the ship began to sink and it became clear that there were not enough lifeboats for everyone, something striking took place. |
2:58.0 | As wind weighed recounts, the men in first class led women and children board the boats. About 95% of the women and children in first class were saved compared to only about 30% of the men in first class. |
3:12.0 | Now, while of course first class passengers probably had easier access to the boats, the point remains that some of the world's most powerful men followed an unwritten code of conduct even though it meant certain death for them. |
3:28.0 | Today's elites are chosen in a much more open democratic manner, largely through education. Those who do well on tests get into good colleges, then good graduate schools, then they get the best jobs and so on. |
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