The Three Orders

In the Middle Ages, it was was conventional to divide society into three orders: those who toil (the peasants), those who fight (the lords), and those who pray (the monks). In today’s Republican Party, there is also a tripartite division. Those who toil may be considered the evangelicals; those who fight, the bosses…er, the economic […]

three_orders.jpgIn the Middle Ages, it was was conventional to divide society into three orders: those who toil (the peasants), those who fight (the lords), and those who pray (the monks). In today’s Republican Party, there is also a tripartite division. Those who toil may be considered the evangelicals; those who fight, the bosses…er, the economic conservatives; and those who pray are the party’s clerisy, let’s call them its intellectual elite: the neocons.
A Fable
Once upon a time there was a man, a prince among men, a knight of the realm, a crusader. And he journeyed far and journeyed wide, in the service of his realm. And in time he was captured by the enemy, and imprisoned for many a year, and he suffered grievously, nigh unto the end of the conflict; and returned home a hero. And in time he became a great lord of the realm, and one who never, or rarely, permitted his honor to be besmirched. And sometime would he become wroth with his fellows, and often would joke with the scribes of the realm, and there were those who would eventually come to call him Maverick.
And hungering after his place in history, the Maverick came in time to seek the highest office in the land, and failed to achieve it. And then he sought it again, and came nigh unto the final test, and found he needed a helpmeet to achieve it. And fain would he have chosen a bosom bud, a comrade in arms, one of the guys.
Sarah Palin’s choice has enraptured the toilers, and is just fine with the fighters. But it hasn’t sat quite as well with the neocons. They had been hoping for one of their own, a Lieberman (Kristol), or at least someone with the gravitas and academic sitzfleish to manage to sit through an AEI seminar without, like, wanting to know where the moose lick is. Enraptured they are not.

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