Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
>
> [WS:] Would not that coherence be negatively
> correlated with their level of legitimacy. The less
> legitimate they are, the most coherent they must be to
> preempt challenges. And the more legitmate they are,
> the more free ride they enjoy, and thus they do not
> need to be coherent to maintain their position.
>
> Following Hofstadter's argument, there seem to be a
> great deal of shared values among American elites and
> the populace, and shered values are the grounds for
> legitimacy. It seems, therefore, that the US elite
> enjoys a great deal of legitimacy, and therefore they
> do not need to be coherent at all. All they need is
> to have some means of accumulation, and legitimacy
> will follow. Iraq and subprime crisis are only minor
> distractions.
This seems to me quite standard wisdom, and in the present case standard wisdom seems to hold. In recent times the only occurences in which a ruling class needed more coherence were in Iran in the 1970s, Cuba in the 1970s, and the USSR under Gorbchev.
Carrol