gat

2 The inner ring of these schools, which sets the standard for the rest, includes these eighteen: Groton, St. Paul’s,
Deerfield, Gunnery, Choate, Middlesex, Lawrenceville, Hotchkiss, St. George’s, Kent, Hill, Episcopal High (not
Episcopal Prep!), Andover, Exeter, Culver Military, Milton Academy, St. Marks, Woodberry Forest, and perhaps one
or two more. About 52 percent of the elite boarding schools are connected with the Episcopal Church and 5 percent
with the Quaker faith.
Organizing Caste
In Darwin’s second important book, The Descent of Man, the fate in store for those liberal
societies which allow mongrelization of the racial stock was made clear. They would fall prey to
the ruthlessly evenhanded workings of evolution and devolve through reversion. The lesson of
Descent was not lost on Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, or San Francisco. In one brief
instant the rationale for a caste system was born and accepted. No merit system ever after could
seriously breach the hereditarian barrier any more than it could budge the "scientific" bell-curve
barrier. A biological basis for morality had been established.
One of the hundred new hereditarian societies (all survive, by the way) was "The Aztec Club of
1847," cherishing those who participated in the Mexican War as commissioned officers, and their
descendants. The Aztec Club actually anticipated the intense hereditarian period by a few years
and so may be considered a pioneer. Had you been an Aztec at the founding dinner in 1880, you
would have been at a table with President Grant and Jefferson Davis, as well as a fraternity of
names engraved in legend. Presidents Taylor and Pierce and Generals Lee and Pickett were dead,
or they would have been there, too. The Aztec Club of 1847. Not a single public schoolteacher of
the nearly 3 million in the United States has ever been on its rolls, I’m told. Are we in the
presence here of some higher truth?
The Society of California Pioneers was another of these new hereditarian bodies which came to
exist in the narrow zone of time just before effective mass compulsion schooling. This particular
society celebrates "those memorable pioneers whose enterprise induced them to become the
founders of a new State." I don’t think you ought to summon up a mental picture of some
grizzled prospector to fit that enterprise. Leland Stanford’s family better fits the bill.
Here is a baker’s dozen of other outfits to allow you to see more clearly the outlines of the new
society rising like an English phoenix out of the ashes of our democratic republic:
The Order of Americans of Armorial Ancestry
The Society of Mayflower Descendants
The Society of Americans of Royal Descent
The Daughters of the Utah Pioneers
The Women Descendants of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery
The Order of the First Families of Virginia
The Order of the Crown of Charlemagne
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