Digby: The Aristocrats

Gilliard has posted a rundown of the recent Fall of the House of Bush. You can certainly understand why the patriarch might cry in public. But what's most fascinating is this amazing picture.

It reminded me of this article by Phil Agre from a few years back that I've been meaning to discuss as we watch the edifice of modern conservatism start to crumble. It's an interesting piece, but what's really important is something that is so obvious that we sometimes forget about it with all the Neo-con and Theo-con intellectual babble of recent years:

From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.