Thanks to Liberal Polemic for alerting me to this piece from The Times last week. The author, Cristina Odone, makes a very interesting point:
[George] Orwell and [Evelyn] Waugh feared the appearance of a new elite made up of the so-called educated classes. They predicted that a New Boy Network based on test-score merit rather than lineage would sprout, which would wield power and influence with a still greater disregard for the “common people" than their predecessors had shown.
This lot would conduct themselves not in accordance to a traditional moral code. Rather they would be regulated by the opinion of their own group, that inner circle of, in Orwell's words, “scientists, technicians, teachers, journalists, broadcasters, bureaucrats, professional politicians". Members of this elite would dread nothing more than failure to conform to one another's views and behaviour.
It sounds all too familiar... we now call it political correctness...
