David Brooks Misunderstands the Miseducation of Elites

Donald Trump won a return to the White House in no small part because America’s progressive elites alienated significant swathes of working-class and middle-class Americans. For decades, progressive elites have exercised near-hegemonic control over America’s highly selective colleges and universities. They have used that power to incubate ideas, hone rhetoric, cultivate sensibilities, refine manners, and inspire policies to enable their graduates to instruct and govern the nation. Instead, their graduates’ ideas, rhetoric, sensibilities, manners, and policies drove a diverse array of ordinary Americans into the arms of Donald Trump’s Republican Party.