I enjoyed this @mattyglesias take but he does not, in fact, bite the bullet implied by his analysis:
slowboring.com/p/meritocracy-…
If the problem with meritocracy is really that it has led to a decline in "public virtue" and "a belief that some things just aren’t worth it" among the elite, then really, truly biting the bullet would involve saying that maybe we need ... a more hereditary elite.
The argument being that you need some people inside your elite who are secure enough in their place within it that they aren't in competition with each other all the time and have the leisure to set some rules about morality and good form.
americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/02/redisc…
And the problem w/meritocracy is that it still follows hereditary patterns (rich kids of rich parents go to Harvard in large numbers!) without accruing any of the possible social benefits of having a *secure* elite shaping norms that talented people must adopt as they ascend.
This is a theme of the greatest movie about meritocracy, The Social Network, in which the old money and the new money and the upper-middle class striver are all conformed to the same pattern of frantic competition.
Anyway there are also immense problems with an overtly hereditary elite, which is why the last one we had failed to survive the challenge from meritocracy. But I'm just saying that's the real unbitten bullet for the case against meritocracy.

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More from @DouthatNYT

17 Mar
If Democrats do abolish or dramatically weaken the filibuster it will because the Republican Party, by its nature as a blocking coalition, struggles to make credible policy threats.
The Democrats have all kinds of internal divisions but they have a core agenda (for now) that unifies the party. The Republicans, given 51 Senate votes, would still lack such an agenda, and so the prospect of giving them more power to legislate inspires little liberal fear.
This might be short-sighted: A post-filibuster GOP could face new pressures that make it policy-oriented and more threatening to liberalism. (Indeed that's one reason conservatives who want a more ambitious GOP might welcome the change.)
Read 4 tweets
16 Mar
To celebrate publication day for The Decadent Society paperback, a Substack post on "post-liberal" responses to political decadence:
douthat.substack.com/p/the-rights-a…
The paperback itself, meanwhile, can now be yours without delay:
amazon.com/Decadent-Socie…
And you listen to me talking about decadence and conservatism, among other things, on @RealignmentPod:
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/108…
Read 4 tweets
12 Mar
A week's worth of writing on decadence, a thread:
1. The Pandemic and The Decadent Society:
douthat.substack.com/p/the-pandemic…
2. Can Science End Decadence?
douthat.substack.com/p/can-science-…
3. The Implications of the 6th of January:
douthat.substack.com/p/the-implicat…
Read 9 tweets
8 Mar
A self-promotional thread:
The Decadent Society is out in paperback in about a week. It's new and improved! It has new material, not just a new subtitle! It addresses the rather un-decadent events that intervened just as the hardcover was coming out!:
amazon.com/Decadent-Socie…
I'm grateful to everyone who purchased The Decadent Society in hardcover. But I'll be honest: I think more of you would enjoy the book. So I've done what self-promoters do nowadays: Start a Substack with posts on the book and its themes. Here's the first:
douthat.substack.com/p/the-pandemic…
There will be, time permitting, about 10-12 more posts on decadence coming in that space over the next 2-3 weeks. After that, it will become a space for intermittent posts about TV, books and movies. If that sounds attractive, please subscribe.
douthat.substack.com
Read 5 tweets
7 Mar
My Sunday column: Do Liberals Care If Books Disappear?:
nytimes.com/2021/03/06/opi…
One further note: Far from being a minor controversy this strikes me as a really important and complex one; I could have easily written another thousand words just on similar questions around The Adventures of Tintin.
I'm not a free-speech absolutist and the arguments I've applied to pornography in the past have applications to certain forms of racist speech and publication.
Read 11 tweets
13 Jan
It can be replicated with mass conversions to a stringent Dutch Calvinism.
As @TPCarney has noted, this is a national pattern:
politico.com/magazine/story… Image
Strong, institutionally-rooted religious subcultures provide some inoculation against the worst Trumpism. Unfortunately we don't have many of them any more.
Read 4 tweets

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