Breakdown of the Old Order

An interesting set of posts in the past day or so about the ongoing breakdown of the old order.

Walter Russell Mead writes on his blog about the breakdown of the American political parties.  The rise of various populist movements and the availability of outside money has lessened the influence of party structures.  But he makes the larger point that,

"populism, plutocracy and dynasticism have traditionally been seen as signs that a republic is in trouble.  The rise of populism means that a gap has opened up between the leadership elite of a society and ordinary voters.  Alienated from a system that is no longer seen to be working, populist voters believe that the system and the establishment are the enemy.  Clearly, an establishment which allows such a climate to flourish is an establishment without the skills or the character to lead."

At the Volokh Conspiracy (a legal industry blog), Kenneth Anderson writes about the "Fragmenting of the New Class Elites."  The "New Class" refers to a society's Nomenklatura, the ruling political class, functionaries, and hangers on that view themselves as among the nation's elite.  (I've written about the American nomenklatura before.)

Anderson makes the useful point that our political elite is splitting into two tiers:

"The upper tier, the bankers-government bankers-super credentialed elites.  But also the lower tier, those who saw themselves entitled to a white collar job in the Virtue Industries of government and non-profits—the helping professions, the culture industry, the virtueocracies, the industries of therapeutic social control."

His theory is that the two tiers are now at war with each other.  I love the close,

"The downward mobility is real, however, in both income and status.  The Cal graduate started out wanting to do “sustainable conservation.”  She is now engaged in something closer to subsistence farming."

Anderson is actually reacting to this post this post from Glenn Reynolds (the InstaPundit) back in 2003. 

For his part, Reynolds links to several contemporary (2011) takes on our current situation [1], [2], and [3].

I hate to get all dialectical on everyone, but a breakdown of the old order is probably a needed pre-condition to rebuilding from the bottom up.