On May 27, 2007, at 10:03 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
> I've toyed from time to time with the idea that the ruling class is
> not a
> unitary entity.
Not now, it's not, in the U.S. Nothing's replaced the WASPs as a coherent social entity, with a common worldview, social ties, institutional affiliations, or a cuisine. Compare the editpages of the NYT & WSJ as mouthpieces for elite thinking (or transmission belts from the upper to upper-middle levels). The right-wing ascendancy of the late 1970s/early 1980s looks to have shot its wad, and there's no successor in the wings.
Doug