Talking About the Ruling Class

Especially judges.

So last night I spoke at the University of San Diego Law School, home of InstaPundit co-blogger Gail Heriot, on the topic of “Our Ruling Class Monoculture, the Judiciary’s Class War, and the Coming Realignment.” It was a fun event, open to the public with RSVPs, and quite a few InstaPundit readers from San Diego and surrounding parts showed up.

It was a packed house.

Leslie Eastman of Legal Insurrection wrote about it and we took a picture together — I don’t know why my suit looks so shiny in the pic, it didn’t look that way in real life — and you can read her account for a an impartial third-party take. For people who have been reading my stuff, like The Judiciary’s Class War and Our Ruling Class Monoculture, it won’t come as much of a surprise, though I like to think that I delivered it in my own, inimitable, fashion.

I was delighted to meet so many InstaPundit readers who had been reading me since the beginning, and several people there —- all, I should say, quite buff — said that they had started up with the Mark Rippetoe weight training routine in response to my posts on it. It’s nice to know that I have directly influenced people’s lives for the better.

As a sign of the times, I was assigned a personal protection officer — basically a bodyguard — from the USD Police, a nice, very fit-looking fellow who was good at his job. Not quite my first time having a bodyguard at a speaking event, but it really tells you where we are these days. He shadowed me through the speech and the dinner that followed, explaining in advance the primary, secondary, and tertiary routes of egress if things went south.

Happily, they didn’t, and now I’m in the American Express club in the Atlanta airport cadging a fee meal and a free glass of wine while waiting for my Knoxville flight. (As we say in the South, it doesn’t matter if you go to Heaven or Hell, you’ll have to make a stop in Atlanta on the way). It wasn’t a great time to go, what with Helen’s recovery from dental surgery and moving my mom into assisted living this past weekend, but as usual this was scheduled months ago and I didn’t want to let them down. And I had a great time. Honestly, a couple of days away — and that’s all it was as I flew out on Sunday, spoke yesterday, and am returning today — was kind of a nice break.

I hope that you all get a nice break when you need one too.