Capital: The ruling class

[W]e have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.

...We should dispense with the aspiration to "be liked" or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and--for the Far East--unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
- George Kennan, Former Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff, February 1948



If it's class warfare, my class is winning.
- Warren Buffett



This is a gathering of the haves and the have-mores. Some call you the elite, but I call you my base.
- President George Walker Bush



The people who own the country ought to govern it.
- John Jay, coauthor of the Federalist Papers and the first Chief Justice



The evils of experience flow from the excess of democracy.
- Elbridge Gerry, fifth Vice President it the U.S.A., and the first "gerrymanderer"



The people should have as little to do as may be about the Government.
- Roger Sherman, co-signer of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and a representative of Connecticut



All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are rich and well born; the other, the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second; and as they cannot receive any advantage by change, they will therefore maintain good government.
- Alexander Hamilton, 1787



Landholders ought to have a share in the government to support these invaluable interests and check the other many. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.
- James Madison



Al Smith once remarked that "the only cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy." Our analysis suggests that applying that cure at the present time could well be adding fuel to the flames. Instead, some of the problems of governance in the United States today stem from an excess of democracy - an "excess of democracy" in much the same sense in which David Donald used the term to refer to the consequences of the Jacksonian revolution which helped to precipitate the Civil War. Needed, instead, is a greater degree Of moderation in democracy.
- Samuel P. Huntington, The Crisis Of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission



[T]he effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups. In the past, every democratic society has had a marginal population, of greater or lesser size, which has not actively participated in politics. In itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic, but it has also been one of the factors which has enabled democracy to function effectively. Marginal social groups, as in the case of the blacks, are now becoming full participants in the political system. Yet the danger of overloading the political system with demands which extend its functions and undermine its authority still remains. Less marginality on the part of some groups thus needs to be replaced by more self-restraint on the part of all groups.
- Samuel P. Huntington, The Crisis Of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission




To my father the world's fair was an opportunity to keep the status quo, that is capitalism in a democracy. Democracy and capitalism, that marriage. That linking, just like that. He did that by manipulating people, and getting them to think that you couldn't have real democracy in anything but a capitalist soicety, which was capable of doing anything - of creating these wonderful highways, of making moving pictures inside everybody's house, of telephones that didn'y need cords, of sleek roadsters. I mean, it was consumerist, but at the same time you inferred that in a funny way democracy and capitalism went together.
- Ann Bernays, daughter of American propagandist Edward Bernays on his exhibit "Democracity" at the 1939 World's Fair



The individual has no chance to exercise his judgment either on principal questions or on their implication; this leads to the atrophy of a faculty not comfortably exercised under [the best of] conditions...Once personal judgment and critical faculties have disappeared or have atrophied, they will not simply reappear when propaganda is suppressed...years of intellectual and spiritual education would be needed to restore such faculties. The propagandee, if deprived of one propaganda, will immediately adopt another, this will spare him the agony of finding himself vis a vis some event without a ready-made opinion.
- Jacques Ellul, cited by John Taylor Gatto in The Underground History of American Education



We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.
-Woodrow Wilson



In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply.
- Occasional Letter Number One (1906)of Rockefeller’s General Education Board cited in John Taylor Gatto's The Undderground History of American Education




In the U.S., we avoid discussing the implications of overeducation because we fear that we may reach conclusions that clash with our ideal of equal opportunity for all. But until everyone owns a humanoid robot, as well as a car and a color television, some person will have to do the 'dirty jobs.' Until then, however loath we are to admit it, we must continue to produce an uneducated social class...
- Gerald Bracey, proponent of government schooling, 1991