‘In fact, I think that to some extent, the current political wars are a culture war not between social liberals and social conservatives, but between the values of the mandarin system, and the values of those who compete in the very different culture of ordinary businesses–ones outside glamor industries like tech or design.’
I’m still thinking some of those people in ‘the ruling class’ are going to need some support if the public backlash gets too strong (Washington D.C. is the ‘Hunger Games Capitol City‘). To some extent they are us, after all, elected to do the necessary evil of hashing out our business within our Constitutional framework, even if many in our society’s vision of leadership is a group of insulated scholar-bureaucrats. The sausage still needs to get made, and we’ve got to get the incentives right.
I wouldn’t exactly call tech ‘glamour,’ either, especially as it can be a kind of white collar wage slavery for coders and programmers. Design, too, you know, has to work. Usually, that isn’t glamorous.
Comments are worth a read.
Possibly Useful Links On This Site:
-Repost-Kenneth Anderson At Volokh: ‘The Fragmenting of the New Class Elites, Or, Downward Mobility’
Thoughts about our political class-Francis Fukuyama And Walter Russell Mead At The American Interest: ‘None Of The Above’
Angelo Codevilla’s polemic: America’s Ruling Class-And The Perils Of Revolution.
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Mentioned in the Comments
Jonathan Rauch at Reason takes a look at Charles Murray’s Coming Apart.
Are we going soft and “European”… do we need to protect our religious idealism enshrined in the Constitution….with the social sciences?…Charles Murray Lecture At AEI: The Happiness Of People
Charles Murray wrote a good book on this subject called ‘Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010′.
Malcolm, thanks for the link. Someone over at McArdle’s site mentioned it too. I’ll check it out.