One of the big weaknesses of Western society in our age is the near disappearance of Noblesse Oblige, the view that people in the upper orders of society should take a serious interest in the welfare of the lower orders. In the US and Western Europe one finds very little interest on the part of elites in recent decades to worry much about the welfare of the common man.
As a Christian, I take these matters seriously. In Luke 12:48 Jesus says “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.” If we are given wealth excess to our basic needs, we certainly need to earmark some to help our neighbor. This is especially true of someone like myself that believes in the Elite Theory of the “Italian Elitists”as well as James Burnham and his great interpreter Samuel Francis. Elites are inevitable. There can be no society that doesn’t have the richer and more powerful standing over the poorer and less powerful. I don’t even “like” the fact that elites are inevitable, but it just so happens that they are. Noblesse Oblige softens the harsh realities of any political and economic system.
My overall impression of our current age is that there is almost no sense of Noblesse Oblige among our current crop of elites. It’s just a mad scramble for money for the sake of money. Someday we will have a situation where six or seven giant companies in the world will be making trillions selling financial instruments to each other. I don’t see how AI is going to help ordinary people who aren’t millionaires very much. For the big fish like Larry Fink, I don’t see the attraction of adding billions and billions to what he earns year-to year, just for its own sake. The upper must actually care about the lower. I see very few examples of this. There are some purely performative actions taken on behalf of minorities, but nothing to help poor whites. All I see are improvements in productivity and stagnant wages since the 1970’s.
I think that even a lower–middle class man like myself has a responsibility to help working class and working poor people advance themselves. I’m no saint, but I do try. Sadly, however, the country I grew up in the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. There was a bit of Noblesse Oblige in FDR’s New Deal, but how much of it was motivated by kindness to the lower orders as opposed to saving capitalism from its own excesses is an open question.
I am beginning to see some flexibility in some people like Majorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson in actually getting out of the pure capitalist box that conservatives have inhabited since the end of the Second World War. Our crazed deficit spending in unnecessary wars and useless programs make it harder to help those in actual need.
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