The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy.

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The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy.

The United States, a nation founded by a self-conscious elite, is the most anti-elitist of nations. This is one of the paradoxes that has made the nation thrive. Elitism, however defined, is of course coextensive with all political and social life. The classical understanding of the hierarchy of human excellence, as most notably illuminated in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, is what made political life and progress possible.

But the very reference to the classical origins of the idea of human excellence, with its obvious implication of a division between superior and inferior, brings to mind ...

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