Both Armed Liberal and Kevin Drum are bemused and I think a little disgusted by Adam Bellow’s article “In Praise of Nepotism,” which appears in the current issue of The Atlantic. (It isn’t available online.)

The Marxist daemon who lives on my left shoulder says with enthusiasm that it would be great if the national myth of meritocracy were replaced by a shameless defence of jobs-for-the-boys. At least it’s more empirically accurate. Bellow seems to be advocating an old-fashioned deferential conservatism:

Above all, it is high time for us to get over our ambivalence about the “return” of dynastic families. … There is much to be said for these “aristocratic” features of dynastic families, and as long as these families observe the meritocratic rules of the new nepotism, we really have no basis for complaint. Indeed we should not only respect great families, but try to be more like them.

Nepotism as the new meritocracy! You can see how this angle would appeal to magazine editors. Counter-intuitive. Whiff of paradox. Like it. The new rules, by the way, are as follows:

  1. **Don’t embarrass me.**The first rule of patronage has always been that the protégé’s actions and manner reflect on the patron. By holding a patron responsible for his protégé’s performance, the Mandarins of the Chinese imperial bureaucracy introduced a powerful corrective to the potential for nepotistic abuses. This is also the corrective built into the modern nepotistic equation.
  2. Don’t embarrass yourself, or You have to work harder than anyone else. … This is what distinguishes the new nepotism from the old: other people must prove their merit before the fact, but nepotees must prove it after.
  3. Pass it on. Although nepotism is considered selfish, it proceeds from the generous impulse to pass something on to one’s children, and this we think of as entirely praiseworthy. … This wholesome consciousness implies a certain humility and an acceptance of morality.

Sounds great! Sign me up, Dad! Bellow’s argument is much more generally applicable than he realises. Forget the Mayflower crowd. If we’re going to endorse the New Nepotism, there is an obvious policy area where all these virtuous mechanisms should apply: Affirmative Action. Let’s see. Don’t Embarrass Me. Check. Being admitted to, oh, Michigan Law School is a big deal. As a patron, the Law School sets a high standard, like the Chinese Mandarins did. This is a “powerful corrective” to the dangers of abuse. Don’t Embarrass Yourself. Check. The AA admittee surely feels the need to “work harder than anyone else.” This is a powerful spur to success. Pass it On. Check. Although it might be considered an unfair advantage, AA originates in a desire to do good and encourages a wholesome consciousness that is entirely praiseworthy.

So there you have it. Although he probably just wanted to purge that “I’m only getting read because I’m Saul Bellow’s kid” feeling that he gets at 4am, Bellow has provided us with a brilliant conservative justification of Affirmative Action. The stock conservative critique of modest AA programs—that their beneficiaries are unable to compete, are “tarred as undeserving” (to borrow a phrase from Justice Thomas) and suffer terribly as a result—is shown up as so much nonsense. In fact, by Bellow’s argument the mechanisms of the New Nepotism are likely to work even better in AA programs than the Nation’s Great Families. After all, if even the boss’s callow offspring, ruined by years of entitlement, can be transformed into a worthy character, then a hungry young minority kid who’s just got the break they’ve always needed poses no challenge at all. As Bellow’s argument makes clear, Nepotism has always been with us, it isn’t going away, and AA is just one of the forms it takes in a society dominated by complex organizations rather than kinship networks.

I expect to see this line of thought fleshed out in Bellow’s forthcoming book, and fully endorsed in the good-natured reviews his Dad’s buddies will write for the chattering-class weeklies.