Trent accuses the Democrats of identifying with an elite that wants to bring “us back to ‘normal,’” which he describes in the following terms: “Back to when people still struggled to afford the basics, when the USA was still a weakening nation, when all the broken and corrupted institutions that served their interests were humming along just fine. Many of them turn out to be exemplars of a special category: “conflict of intellectual interest.” Alas, the pattern even spills over into academia, which just as for the political class has its “revolving door.” Our intellectual establishment, private and public, finds itself at a far cry from the ideal expressed by English poet Geoffrey Chaucer seven centuries ago in the English of his time in his description of his “clerk of Oxenford” (Oxford cleric, a student and teacher): While conflicts of interest have always existed, the recent apparent disavowal of traditional ethical restraints and the unprecedented scope of private financial ties at the highest levels of government have led many to conclude that the system has transitioned from attempting to manage an undesirable vice to merely accepting and working within a de facto feature.
Author: Peter Isackson
Published at: 2025-11-07 14:16:56
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