Burnham, Codevilla, Machiavelli, Oh My!!

When Angelo Codevilla wrote his sensational work on "the Ruling Class", it added firewood to the Tea Party's smoldering charcoal, producing a mini-revolution and sending a number of new people into Congress.

Now comes Daniel McCarthy, who essays on James Burnham's work, connecting Machiavelli's observations with Burnham's, (and those of George Orwell!!). 

Yes, Virginia, there is a "Ruling Class."  And it ain't going away.  The sad failure of Sen. Ron Johnson (and others like him, who were elected as 'reformers') proves the case Burnham and Machiavelli made.  Johnson and his ilk--with few exceptions--have been co-opted by their own "managerial" backgrounds and have given up on liberty as a result.

...Democracy or equality—the idea that everyone participates on the same level—is antithetical to the very concept of organization, which necessarily involves different persons, different “organs,” serving different roles. And some roles are more powerful than others.

Not only do leaders corrupt organizations, Burnham observes, but the oligarchic nature of organization affects even the most selfless leader as well. “Individual saints, exempt in individual intention from the law of power, will nonetheless be always bound to it through the disciples, associates, and followers to whom they cannot, in organized social life, avoid being tied.” Many a grassroots true believer faults bad advisers for the mistakes of a Ronald Reagan or Ron Paul—but the problem is not bad advisers, it’s advisers, period. They are necessary, and they necessarily have their own motives and perspectives. Without them, however, there would be no organization. This is as true of grassroots groups, even purely volunteer ones, as of Beltway cliques....

(Of course, there are many (D) voters who see that problem with the Obama Administration's various failures-to-deliver on "promises.")

Will it take a full-blown revolution to rid the country of the destructive barnacles--the cancer--of the Ruling Class?

HT:  Grim