How Elites Destroy Themselves

By Jonathan F. Keiler

An 18th Century European lord puzzling over the accelerating decline of the aristocracy only had to look in the mirror to find his answer. Chronic inbreeding ensured the degeneration of the gentry, and yet even though the nobility well knew this, they were powerless. The entire European system of class and governance rested upon the idea of hereditary rule, even as it sowed the seeds of its own demise.

Elites always need more than just raw power. They need a justification for rule to establish legitimacy, at a very minimum in their own eyes, if not those of the lower classes. Today’s elites are no different, and their claims to legitimacy no better than that of modern Europe’s doomed nobility. They must inevitably fall, though the questions as always are -- how long and at what cost?

In the millennium after Germanic warlords overran the weakened Roman Empire, they established a system of rule based on hereditary right. Over the centuries the gene pool gave out on them, evidenced not only by chronic disease, but in appearance, fertility, and intellect.

When Spain’s King Phillip IV hired Diego Velazquez to paint his portrait, he asked the painter hide his oversized “Hapsburg jaw”, the result of relentless inbreeding. Though Velazquez is arguably the greatest painter in history, there was only so much he could do. A century later another great Spanish painter, Francisco Goya painted the family of Charles IV, a controversial work because it depicted them realistically, which was not a good thing.........Read more