Can't any of 'them' just realize that people today hate the dumb ideas and ever-reaching government tentacles creeping into our lives and frankly don't care if they wear an ascot or smoke a pipe while using their butlers as a human footrest? (That's what elites do right?)

Their ideas suck.... that's the bottom line.

So, basically, this whole dispute boils down to one set of conservatives using "Ivy League" as a lazy shorthand for "influential people who disagree with me", and another set using "Ivy League" as a lazy shorthand for "successful and meritorious people".

Neither of which adds anything useful to American political discourse.

"He should listen harder, because in fact the rhetoric is far more sweeping than that, encompassing not only liberals but anyone with higher eduction."

Funny, but two people Ms. Applebaum cites are Ms. Palin and Ms. O'Donnell. Both have degrees, if I'm not mistaken, so I don't believe their comments are at all an assault on higher education in general. I also seem to recall widespread liberal derision and condescension directed at Ms. Palin's alma mater.

I suppose a state school doesn't have the same pedigree as the Ivy Leagues, but I've met many people with a state school education who were better read and more logical than others I've met from Brown, Yale, and Harvard. (With grade inflation, I often wonder if a "lesser" school's degree isn't often quite superior.)

My wife and I have three degrees between us (including a masters degree) and we know what's best for ourselves and our kids. We draw the line there. We know we don't know what's best for other people, be they more or less educated than us.

What is infuriating is that there are people who think they can and should make decisions for us. These people tend to have graduated from the same places, and hold the same ideas of intrusive, maternal government.

(Of course, there are those who came from the same schools but understand that they have neither the right nor responsibility to attempt to guide our lives in any way. Those in this camp who enter the world of politics need and deserve our support.)

Humility. People need humility. What I find interesting is the ability of so many 'elites' to simply overlook history and act shocked at the idea that the populace would ever think to rise up. Money, merit, education, ability, nobility, honor; none of that matters when enough people decide that they are tired of being stepped on. The safest thing to do in that situation is to step aside and see what happens. Politicians who think they can get in front of this wave should be very wary.

Reading this made me think of the recent dust-up between Victor Davis Hanson and that Stanford paper. To me, that's a pretty neat sum-up of the difference between "learned" and "elite."

Maybe that's unfair, because the article attacking VDH was unsigned. Or maybe it's very fair because the article plainly illustrates the culture of modern intellectualism.

Can't speak for others, but this Tea Partier won't simply assume that an ivy league professor knows anything about the world aside from what his orthodoxy tells him. I distrust his culture that much.

Applebaum misses the point. It is not the existence of elites that people are angry about. It is about two things. First it is the definition of who is "elite" and who is not. No one begrudges real achievement. The problem is that we have a generation of people who have done nothing but suck up and go to the right schools who claim to be "elite". When someone calls Bill Gates an "elite" no one is offended or has a problem with it. When Ezra Klein or some other bloviating idiot in the media calls themselves an "elite" people who have actually accomplished things get a little offended.

Second, it is about what it means to be an "elite". Being elite at something doesn't make you morally superior to anyone. You can be great at something and still be an awful person. Morality and achievement are two different things. And most importantly, being elite doesn't give you the right to tell everyone else how to live their lives or give you some kind of divine right to manage everyone else for their own good. If elites would stop thinking that their status gives them the right to control everyone around them, they wouldn't be so hated.

I would also add a third point. Elites never seem to be held responsible for anything. Back in the day, if you messed up badly, you were never given another shot at a big job. William Mullholland, for example pretty much built LA. But when one of the dams he built collapsed and killed a bunch of people, that was it. He was done. He died in disgrace. Now, elites routinely mess up and go merely on to new and better jobs. Fields of elites, like education 'experts' have destroyed entire segments of civic life and still expect to be held in high esteem. That makes people angry.

[I posted this comment at the end of Ms. Applebaum's article]:

Conservatives complain of liberal elites in the sense that liberal elites are paternalistic. In conservative conversations, use of the term "elites" is synonymous with "those who impose mandates on us, and/or look down on us, as though they are our betters."

The type of paternalistic governance conservatives complain of most is the type often seen from the Left. The Left usually seeks a well-meaning paternalism - which nonetheless erodes our freedoms and costs a lot of taxpayer money.

As a scholar of the Soviet Union, Ms. Applebaum, you should particularly understand how a government that espouses a philosophy of helping the downtrodden can be terribly oppressive.

So - if someone goes to Yale or Harvard - but opposes paternalistic government policies - conservatives and the tea party movement would embrace them (and their educational excellence). They would not be called "elite" by conservatives in the negative sense described above.

From Ann's original column: "But I don't quite see what comes next. When Ginni Thomas tells a cheering crowd of Virginia Tea Partyers that "we are ruled by an elite that thinks it knows better than we know" who, or what, does she want to put in its place?"

"Put in its place" is the key phrase. How about NOTHING in its place? STOP trying to run our lives for our own betterment. How about a citizen legislature populated by citizens that have to live under the rules and regulations and repucussions in the real world?

Ann's literal interpretation of the tea party's anti-elite sentiment appears one-dimensional and shallow for someone of her background and education. Ha.

I know of a an elite who came up with a dumb idea that dictates our lives, its called the Laffer Curve and its creator, Frank Laffer, graduated from Yale and Stanford. The idea that the only ideas that come out of elite institutions are both liberal and destructive is really dumb. There are many conservatives who think they know what's best for the rest of us, and they come out with idiotic ideas that do not lead to economic advancement, or more freedom. You don't think an economic model built on drastically cutting taxes on the top 2% and that revenue would "trickle down" to us commoners is elitist? Give me a break.

Lastly, the idea that the academy is a liberal wasteland is made by people who don't know much about how a university is run. The death of higher education started when administrators started looking at corporate business models as way to structure the universities finances and mission. The notion that college equals liberal is lazy and dishonest. The only clear liberal bent you find in college is in the humanities which is no longer the top major for college students. Degrees in business(the top major for undergraduates), engineering, law, medicine, are more conservative.