IAN BURUMA HAS A POWERFUL ESSAY on the hypocrisy of the chattering classes:

Strengthening civil society. Well, that would indeed be a fine thing. Perhaps more could have been done to strengthen civil society in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, or perhaps in Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea too. What is astonishing here is not the naivety, but the off-handed way well-heeled commentators in London, California, or New Delhi, talk about the suffering of the very people they pretend to stand up for. Vidal dismisses it as “not my problem”. Tariq Ali calls for more violence. And Arundathi Roy prattles about civil society.

That’s because these people are poseurs, who aren’t worthy of the (steadily diminishing) attention they receive. But they’re also, as Buruma notes, the latest example of an old trend — members of the nobility and the haut-bourgeoisie heaping scorn on those willing to work harder than them, and insufficiently respectful of their assumed authority. I wrote a bit about this here, and linked to this essay by David Levy and Sandra Peart that seems more relevant all the time.

Read this essay on anti-Americanism by Fouad Ajami, too.

UPDATE: Tim Blair on Gore Vidal: “I’d argue with him, but he’s not my problem.”