A common theme for both pundits and academics in our political moment has been the failure of America’s elites, and the need to cultivate a new class of leaders more accountable to the interests of Main Street, the working class, and the “Great American Middle”—or “flyover country” to those same elites. This line of thinking has become something of a cliché, and few have probed beyond the surface to explore why our elites failed and the conditions needed for creating a new and more humane leadership class today.
The desire for a natural aristocracy is at least as old as the American Founding. Thomas Jefferson, for example, imagined the qualities needed for those aspiring to elected office in his new republic and had faith that the American people would be able to separate the “aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff” at the ballot box by discerning between natural aristocrats (i.e., those possessing “virtue and talents”), and artificial aristocrats (i.e., those possessing “wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents”). Centuries later, building upon Jefferson’s aspirations, many conservative luminaries have renewed the call for a natural aristocracy with the power to check the passions of the people and order society towards the common good.
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