November 13 1995

ARTICLE TOOLS

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If the ties of shared values are broken, a country can only be a congeries of clashing peoples held together by the coercive force of the state.

When my washing machine broke down, I called my trusted repairman, Leonard. And the ensuing conversation painted a vivid picture of a deep chasm threatening American society today.

When Leonard arrived, toolbox in hand, he was combative. "I don't trust those folks in Washington anymore," he said. "They don't care about us. When are we going to fight back?" And as he performed his mysterious ministrations upon my washing machine's wires and widgets, I listened to a continuous tirade on everything from Waco to term limits.

Having once been one of "those folks in Washington" myself, I took his concerns seriously. Newscasters warn of growing "antigovernment" sentiment, but they're missing the point: Leonard and his friends are not angry at government but at the people in cultural leadership today. They sense that the national culture is shaped by a ruling class whose ethos is alien to that of average Americans.

And they're right. Sociologists tell us a new class is emerging, comprising people who work with words and ideas: journalists, politicians, lawyers, managers, financial advisers. Peter Berger calls them the knowledge class; Charles Murray speaks of a cognitive elite; Michael Lind coined the phrase "the overclass."

Of course, every society has a leadership class, but the new elite is historically unique. When wealth was based on land, wealthy families remained rooted in a community, which nurtured a sense of communal responsibility. As Christopher Lasch writes in "The Revolt of the Elites," "Wealth was understood to carry civic obligations."

By contrast, most members of today's elite ...