Belief And Beggary

We are now hearing a lot about the distancing of the political leadership from what was once its core votes.  In the UK referring to a Westminster inward looking elite.  In the USA, it is Washington DC with lines to New York and California.  In France, as always, Paris, etc. etc.

This book review in "Spiked" by Sean Collins of Joel Kotkin's "The Tyranny Of The New Secular Priesthood" argues that we now have a caste, he calls it "Clerisy", who dominate debate and dictate an ideology that is reducing living standards and life opportunities for the middling and lower orders.

The word "Clerisy" is not a new one but used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge early in the 19th Century to describe the new evangelical mission of the Anglican Church to exert control over the lives and thinking of the lower orders.

There is a touch of irony here in that Coleridge was closely connected to one of the chief figures of the world of science in his day who employed Humphrey Davey.

Thomas Beddoes was supported by Georgiana, Duchess of Cavendish, among others, and also involved were the family of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, including Maria, and the Greys of Howick.

Yet our new Clerisy is said to take its reasoning and dogmas from modern science, albeit selected and presented to support their view of our world and how it should be.  It seems that not a lot changes, as ever.