THE STRANGE FAILURE of the educated elite new establishment:

The essential point is this: Those dimwitted, stuck up blue bloods in the old establishment had something we meritocrats lack — a civic consciousness, a sense that we live life embedded in community and nation, that we owe a debt to community and nation and that the essence of the admirable life is community before self.

Not strange at all, as anyone who lives farther than 50 miles from either coast can tell you.