Glenn Smith has
an excellent run down on the history of "Elitist Democracy" in this country (especially over the last half century) that shines a light on the subject of the recent dustup with The New Republic.
I'd like to add two additional points Glenn's work: An "Elitist Democracy" is inherently contradictory and The Markos Mafia is a fever dream created by the elites because they need it to be true in order for them to understand what is going on.
More after the break...
(1) An "Elitist Democracy" is inherently contradictory because Democracy is, by definition, a system in which the political will ultimately reflects the will of The People. In Democracy, The People are the sovereign and are thus always the masters of their fate (even unto a complete surrender of their power to an elitist cabal). Even in a representative Democracy, where delegates are selected to represent the will of The People, it is still The People from which that power ultimately derives (cf., The Declaration of Independence). Therefore, an "Elitist Democracy" can never be a Democracy. It is simply "The Diving Right of Kings" with a more modern name.
(2) The elites are in a fight against the "rabble" that is nipping at the heels, most prominently represented by the political blogosphere, for just the reasons pointed out by Glenn Smith. They believe that they are the only ones who have a right to dictate the course of our future because they are the only ones who are tapped into what is really going on. They are the only ones who really understand it all. But the fact that they have chosen to take the fight directly to the most prominent bloggers, under the mistaken assumption that taking down a Markos or an Armstrong will weaken the blogs, is just another manifestation of their elitist philosophy. Since they believe that only the elites can be effective in achieving political change and they see blogs starting to bring about effective political change, they can only rightly conclude that the blogs must be led by its own form of elite inner circle. They have manufactured in their minds some cyber equivalent of the smoke-filled back room because that is the only model they have for understanding the world.
The Markos Mafia must exist because they need it to exist.
