“My proposition is that the hollow elite is as dysfunctional in its way as the new lower class is in its way. Personally and as families, its members are successful. But they have abdicated their responsibility to set and promulgate the standards.
“The most powerful and successful members of their class increasingly trade on the perks of their privileged positions without regard to the seemliness of that behavior. The members of the new upper class are active politically, but when it comes to using their positions to help sustain the republic in day-to-day life, they are AWOL.”
Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010 (New York: Crown Forum, 2012), p. 29.
Also of interest:
Absenteeism and omission: sin of the elites
A liberal, reformist, and egalitarian philanthropy
The aristocracy synthesizes the perfections of the community
Our Lord Jesus Christ: the perfect human type
All classes should tend to perfection
The concept of perfection applied to individuals and families
The Different Roads of the Authentic and Inauthentic Elites
Harmful character of the toads
Traditional, aristocratic and authentic elites
National and International Elites
The formation of nations and regions