Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, May. 04, 2004

In some sense something similar can be said of the class from which comes John Kerry - they are different, sometimes are quite wealthy thanks to the exertions of long dead ancestors and utterly unlike the ordinary run of mortals like you and me.

You cannot begin to understand Sen. Kerry if you don't understand the tiny elite that gave him his unique pedigree. There is nothing quite like these people. Unlike the moneyed class whose great wealth sets them apart, this small group of native aristocrats does not regard wealth as a point of pride.

Ancestry is everything, so much so that being poor as a church mouse fails to banish one from the company of those born to the manor. Money is not to be discussed because it is seen as a vulgarity peculiar to the merely rich. And there's always that relative who managed to hang onto the spoils of the sugar or opium trade handed down by ancestors to help out with such things as a French or Swiss education.

But the thing that really sets these people apart is the very noticeable fact that despite the most exquisite educations in the most elite academies, a privileged life in secluded enclaves in New England and New York, and frequent sojourns abroad, there is something missing in their makeup. What that is cannot be readily identified, but it can be glimpsed in the behavior of John Kerry now becoming obvious as he fumbles along seeking the presidency. Something that should be there is not.

Partly it's his intellect which appears to have a giant void - well educated in the finest schools here and abroad, there is a noticeable tinge of ... well, let's call it what it is, stupidity ... lurking under that beautifully coifed head of hair.

And he's not alone among his fellow members of the native aristocracy. That missing ingredient is endemic among his class.

No matter how well trained in the discipline of their ancestry worship and schooling in the best and most exclusive institutions, they often resemble the camel with the load of books on its back - they have the knowledge, but not the ability to apply it. That ability is known among the unelect as "street smarts," and is a vital quality for ordinary mortals not blessed with a host of colonial ancestors and landed properties inherited from their forebears.

What is not missing are a host of traits common to the breed. They adhere to a bizarre code that causes them to speak baby talk - Champaign is "bubbly" as if calling it by its proper name is a vulgarity, cars are "wheels, " patios are "terraces," landed properties are "places," never one's estate.

They relish sailing, disdain motor boats. This may explain why they almost always enlist in the Navy, which they see as the fashionable branch of the armed services, and like the original JFK and John Kerry, they gravitate to small craft rather than serve aboard ships of the line where one melts into the background of large crews. Small craft are exclusive and help one avoid mixing with a host of people not of one's class.

Other traits that stand out include an inability to view marriage as an unbreakable contract. When sufficient financial resources are not available to allow one to live in a manner appropriate to one's aristocratic station, they remedy the situation not by earning wealth by dint of their exertions, but by marrying it.

Massachusetts is the locus of one branch of the native aristocracy, Long Island's Suffolk County is the other. Julia Thorne, John Kerry's discarded first wife, is a member of one of the Suffolk County elite families, a small group who have been clinging to the shores of the Great South Bay in communities such as Bay Shore, the Islips, and Oakdale. In his meticulously researched book, “Along the Great South Bay," Harry W. Havemeyer, a certified member of the Suffolk aristocracy, catalogues their ancestry, which runs back to earliest colonial times.

Kerry's first wife is a descendant of William Thorne who arrived in America in 1638. She and most of her neighbors share common ancestors. The Hollins family of East Islip is a prime example of this commonality of illustrious ancestors. They were related to most of their neighbors and, like most of them, could trace their ancestry back to Robert Livingston, founder of America's premier aristocratic dynasty, and William Beekman who came to New Amsterdam with Governor Peter Stuyvesant in 1647.

That sort of background is the common lot of the native aristocracy which is overwhelmingly Episcopalian and inordinately proud of a lineage about which few Americans can boast. It makes them unique and they fiercely defend and are determined to maintain that uniqueness which makes them a distinctively separate class.

It is that sense of separateness and superiority that at once provides advantages denied to the overwhelming majority of Americans, while at the same time depriving them of any real understanding of what ordinary life in this nation is all about, or the nature of the lives of their fellow Americans. And that's the key ingredient of what is missing in their makeup.

In case you're wondering, I know what I'm talking about. I grew up part of the time along the Great South Bay among these people and married one of their number, much to their horror. Thanks to their magnificent half-Irish mother my offspring are all there, nothing missing, and they couldn't care less that they have Hollins or Livingston ancestors who came here in the 1600s. They live in the real world, not the isolated artificial world their relatives have constructed for themselves. And they're doing just fine, thank you.

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

He can be reached at phil@newsmax.com