Intelectual Elitism

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-23/green-progressive-chatter/4706610

"The argument, conceived no doubt in tertiary-educated repose, is that this country is burdened by an 'insider' class of over-educated inner-urban progressives, people divorced from the mainstream interests and opinion of the country's overwhelming majority: simple plain-thinking folk, who care not a jot for same-sex marriage, climate change or the internationally acknowledged right of the marginalised and oppressed to seek asylum and refuge."

How would you rather have it? To be governed by The Mob? The well educated and most able people are rightly looked up to and elected as our leaders. This happens in every division of human interaction. You can call this an elite if you like, with all the negative connotations associated with this term, but this is the best way to run things. All else is chaos. Think of the Paris of 1897 or the Moscow of 1917. It is fair if there are no barriers to entry into the elite. That is why Gonski is so important and why Whitlam's free tertiary education was such a good idea, so that any member of the "simple plain-thinking folk" can aspire to leadership through membership of the elite.

"Progressive. That seems suddenly to be a dirty word. Tarred with all manner of political overtone. But surely it's a notion that can be as embraced by the right as much as it can by the left? By libertarians and social democrats … as a idea, progress seems blithely agnostic and overwhelmingly positive."

Surely the term 'progressive conservative' is an oxymoron.