{"id":70887,"date":"2025-06-26T01:00:22","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T05:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=70887"},"modified":"2025-06-26T09:58:32","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T13:58:32","slug":"qotd-credentialism-versus-meritocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/06\/26\/qotd-credentialism-versus-meritocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Credentialism versus meritocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Returning briefly to the running theme of Vietnam, what all the “happy little hotdogs” had in common was: They were all Harvard men. Kennedy was a Harvard graduate. McGeorge Bundy had been a Dean at Harvard. McNamara was a Harvard b-school grad. John McNaughton was a Harvard professor. Maxwell Taylor was a West Pointer, but all the other happy little hotdogs said “he was the kind of general Harvard would produce”; they could think of no higher compliment.<\/p>\n

Harvard’s motto is “Veritas<\/em>” \u2014 truth \u2014 but it ought to be “ludificationes pertinet<\/em>“, which the internet informs me is how you say “delusions of competence” in Latin. I meant it when I said that the “Ministry of Talent”, as these jerkoffs unironically called themselves, actually had some serious brainpower and real accomplishments … but the Peter Principle<\/a> is also true, and though they had some real brains and actual accomplishments, neither their brains nor their accomplishments at Harvard<\/em> translated to anything out in the real world, any more than some Late Republic social climber’s “experience” as curule aedile<\/em> translated to anything real in their world.<\/p>\n

Just as the Roman Senate had no idea how to deal with a Julius Caesar, then, despite it all, so no American “leader” had any idea how to deal with a guy like Ho Chi Minh, even though he, like Caesar, had always been perfectly open and forthright about what he was doing and why. It never occurred to “the best and brightest” to even ask the question “What does Ho Chi Minh want?”, because after all, Ho Chi Minh wasn’t a Harvard man.<\/p>\n

And all this was 60 years ago. These days, the AINO<\/acronym> cursus honorum<\/em><\/a> is so widespread that every kid who manages to fill out a college app has a resume that would give McGeorge Bundy an erection lasting more than four hours. You’ll have to trust me on this, I guess, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Flyover State \u2014 which is respectable but rinky-dink; the kind of outfit where you see their team losing a late December bowl game and you think “Gosh, I guess that state has a third college in it” \u2014 had several hundred<\/em> student organizations …<\/p>\n

… all of which seem to exist for no other reason than to have “officers”, to which these little social climbers can be “elected”, the better to pad their law, med, and grad school apps. By the end of my career, probably 3\/4 of the students who ever sent me an email had an auto-signature on it, and that auto-signature was longer than my entire CV. President of this, Vice-Treasurer of that, Assistant Grand Poobah (junior grade) of the other thing. Grandpa Simpson was a piker compared to these kids:<\/p>\n