John Hinderaker of Powerline reports on a Rasmussen poll of our supposed “elites,” undertaken for the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. For purposes of the survey,
The Elites are defined as those 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. Approximately 1% of the total U.S. population meets these criteria.
Hinderaker points out that an income of $150,000 per year in a large American city is middle class, not any sort of economic elite. So what Rassmussen really means by “elite” are well-educated city-dwellers.
What do these people believe?
84% approve of Joe Biden’s performance as president.
70% trust the government to do the right thing most of the time (89% among “the most politically active members of the elite”).
79% have a favorable opinion of journalists.
47% say Americans have too much freedom, whereas only 21% think we have too much government control. Among the Ivy League educated, 55% say America is too free, and only 15% say we have too much government.
The most shocking aspect of the survey was the extent to which these people have been brainwashed into the man-made global warming hoax and are willing to impose extreme, utterly communistic, completely un-American privation on their fellow citizens in pursuit of the climate “net zero” “green new deal” agenda:
77% say they favor the “strict rationing of gas, meat and electricity,” a number that rises to 89% among the Ivy League educated.
69% want to ban gas stoves (Ivy League: 80%)
72% want to ban gasoline powered automobiles (Ivy League: 81%)
55% want to ban “non-essential” air travel (Ivy League: 70%)
58% want to ban Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) (Ivy League: 66%)
53% want to ban air conditioning in homes (Ivy League: 68%)
Obviously, these people are communists, not “progressives” and certainly not “liberals.” But why are we surprised that the college educated are communists, when communists have had control over American higher education for decades. As I wrote in my review of Rod Dreher’s “Live Not by Lies”:
“For decades conservatives did not take seriously the Left’s long march through the institutions, particularly higher education. They were in denial that Marxism would eventually escape the confines of the academy and come to dominate other aspects of American life [quoting Dreher]:
“Back then, the standard conservative response was dismissive. “Wait till those kids get out into the real world and have to find a job.” Well, they did—and they brought the campus to corporate America, to the legal and medical professions, to media, to elementary and secondary schools, and to other institutions of American life. In this cultural revolution, which intensified in the spring and summer of 2020, they are attempting to turn the entire country into a “woke” college campus.”
Those former college students are now running everything, and running it into the ground. The rest of us are learning to our dismay that traditional “liberal” values like toleration, live-and-let-live, freedom of speech and religion—any kind of freedom other than sexual license—were never part of their value system.
And apparently the middle class having a decent standard of living isn’t part of their value system, either. What is so appalling about this poll is that it signals that our educated urban “elites” are just fine with people having no freedom of movement, and with thousands more dying of heat stroke and cold-related causes.
The New York Post says of this poll:
“The United States has a wealthy, partisan elite class that is not only immune from, and numb to, the problems of their countrymen, but enormously confident in, and willing to impose, unpopular policies on them. This is a recipe for disaster.”