In today's NYT, William Kristol wrote a piece titled Here the People Rule.
In it, Kristol seems to argue:
- "Vulgarisation" of politics is actually a compliment, as "vulgus" means "people" and "vulgarisation" means "people rule".
- Though the people aren't always right, they usually are - for instance, they don't blame the Wall Street fat cats for the financial fiasco they engineered. They may be supporting Obama right now (which proves the people are not always right), but they may wake up, smell the sulphur and vote for McCain.
Mr. Kristol's Latin is either very poor, or he is deliberately engaging in some double-speak: "Vulgus" does not refer to the "people"; even "crowd" is charitable. "Vulgus" means "mob", and did so in ancient times.
When the Romans referred to the "people" (as in the "people of Rome") in a neutral sense, they used the word "populus", as in SPQR (Senatus PopulusQue Romanus). When they referred to the voters, they used "civis" - as in St. Paul's "Civis Romanus sum".
There is a reason why we refer to "civil society", not "vulgar society"; why "civility" is considered a virtue and "vulgarity" not.
There was of course a time, not so long ago, when right-wing elitists extolled the virility and strength of the rude common man, the disdain for civility and compromise, the natural merit of the dominance of the strong, exploited the "us" versus "them". Ms. Palin taps into this groundswell, and Mr. Kristol seems to approve.
Mr. Kristol's analysis of the Pew poll findings is similarly eclectic. If anything, it proves that you can't fool all the people all the time. That is surely bad news for Mr. Kristol and his party, whose whole shtick has been to attempt to fool as many of the people as possible for as much of the time as possible.
Of course, Mr. Kristol may belong to those right-wing elitists who also believe that the elite have an obligation to pull the emergency brake when the people are about to commit a fatal error - like electing Mr. Obama. His party's exponents have offered plenty of examples of their belief that the ruling elite have the right to decide when constitutional principles can be thrown overboard if it is necessary to protect democracy, "properly understood".