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[QUOTE=sebastian_dangerfield;502372]A few...

Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust.

There is absolutely no chance that this is true. The addition of (some) women and people of color at minimum make it highly implausible. Not to mention ever growing diversity of faiths.

The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another.

The Silicon Valley tech bros, the New York financiers (hm), Hollywood moguls, the Boston medtech millionaires, the Minnesota health insurance moguls, the bible thumpers who made it big in Ohio politics.

1. The groups of the past were far less diverse than this person seems to imagine. They are white protestant men. But sure, they were from different parts of the country and different industries.

2. There are still different parts of the country and different industries.

Few had much contact with government

Yes, the rich and powerful of the past had no contact with government No Roosevelts. No Washingtons. Heck, no Kennedys.

Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust

Jesus F. Christ. Does this person think Harvard and Yale were formed yesterday? Because those are the universities that formed yesterday's upper crust, and they date to the countries' beginnings.

imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man

Ah, so the lamented loss of "diversity" is really a lament about that the boundaries of scientific knowledge change over time as consensus emerges. That's really creepy.

about American history

So is that. Ah, if only we had more people thought slavery was great. We'd be the stronger for it!

and about how America should be governed.

That's a more interesting one. We've lost the true socialists, the communists and the anarchists and, we thought, the populists. So maybe there are fewer views about the role of government than in the past. But we've gained the libertarians and we've refined the disagreements among our liberals and conservatives.

Anyway, this one I will entertain as maybe relevant.

Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity.

Which is no different than the badges of identity of that past, be they the right last name or religion, having gone to the right school, knowing which fork to use at a formal dinner or whatever. If anything, the manners required to be "in" these days are far simpler, more flexible and open to more people than the past.

America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats.

This person sounds like they have never spent any time at all in Washington. Had they, the would know that arguably the exact opposite is true. Washington is a bland amalgamation of America. Sure, the underclass is under-represented, but the mentality of America's great innovation - the suburb - rules the day.

The tastes and habits of Washington are the tastes and habits of America. Which is why it isn't more interesting.

Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself.

Hence more power for the ruling class has been our ruling class’s solution not just for economic downturns and social ills but also for hurricanes and tornadoes

If you ever find yourself believing that government aid in response to natural disasters is really about enhancing government power, you've lost the thread. That's absurd, and only a sick person would think it (there's at least one party of them out there).

Take a step back and ask yourself, what's the alternative? Leave those afflicted to fend for themselves, lest in helping we might accidently enhance government power? That's perverse. It replaces morality with ideological purity.

left to themselves, Americans use land inefficiently in suburbs and exurbs, making it necessary to use energy to transport them to jobs and shopping.

You've got to be kidding me. "left to themselves," like sprawling suburbs weren't an explicit - gasp - government policy built on the back of massive "patronage" in the form of federal road building dollars. (To say nothing of the absolutely massive expenditure of lives and resources attempting to maintain access to oil)

"Left to themselves" Americans lived in cities, clustered around transit. If anything, the fact that they don't anymore should be this person's number one example of the dangers of government power, which was used to tear up our transit systems, tear down our urban centers and build freeways through the neighborhood of the poor and the black.

But it's not, because the "conservative" position is to continue to pander to what's now "normal."

The ruling class knows that Americans must learn to live more densely and close to work, that they must drive smaller cars and change their lives to use less energy

The ruling class knows that life involves choices, policies and incentives and that if we want to avoid certain spectacularly bad outcomes, we must (1) admit that our current choices are the result of past policies and (2) change those policies.

that they must accept limits in how much medical care they get

And again, "conservatism" gets lost, because no one has asked you to accept limits on how much health care you pay for out of pocket. The question is whether "they" must accept limits on how much health care someone else is paying for. This person is not arguing seriously.

So, ever-greater taxes

This is just factually wrong.

I'm glad I didn't read the rest. Those quotes are abysmal.