Too Many in the Bush

If it's Clinton vs. Bush in the 2016 presidential election, you can at least be glad that the Clinton (Hillary) isn't really a Clinton, and even if she were, the family's legacy began with Bill only a few decades ago.

Unlike the Bush legacy. We all know about George W. and George H.W., but I'd bet fewer of us know about Prescott (1895-1972), who was in the U.S. Senate, let alone his antecedents. Prescott, by the way, is said to have participated in grave-robbing the skull of Geronimo as a prank while he was a member of Yale's Skull and Bones secret society. Throughout his life, he "maintained homes in New York, Long Island and Greenwich, Connecticut; the family compound at Kennebunkport, Maine; the 10,000-acre...Duncannon Plantation near Barnwell, South Carolina; and a secluded island off the Connecticut coast, Fishers Island."

I kept looking for the Bush who first "made it," but I was disappointed. The Bush men have attended Yale since the early 1800s. The Wikipedia page about the family reports their presence back to the Plymouth Colony (though not the Mayflower, it appears).

The Bushes are clearly part of the "natural" aristocracy some people seem to long for (as in this essay about ur-libertarian Hans-Hermann Hoppe by the snarky populist Matt Bruenig). They serve out of noblesse oblige, I guess. Too bad about George and Jeb's brother Neil, who ripped off the public in the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, now mostly forgotten. If he'd just waited a bit longer and worked on Wall Street he's be making big money now. Maybe a future treasury secretary.

I have an innate dislike of dynasties. I don't like the Kennedy family either. Inherited wealth should at least be heavily taxed, if not outlawed. Then we'd see what these people are actually made of.