So I never tire of citing studies that show the obvious.

Here’s one: Rich Democrats and rich Republicans are equally okay with growing income inequality. (The details of the study are silly. But we don’t need them to affirm its truth.)

That might be dismissed as an inevitable downside of our meritocracy based on productivity. Rich folks think they deserve what they have: money. And that’s fine with me. They have often earned what they have, after all.

As Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out, the “heart disease” of democracy is individualism, which is a kind of apathetic passivity that flows from being locked up in a narrow circle — a “gated community” — of family and friends. What atrophies is any sense of civic responsibility or any recognition of responsibilities that come with privileges.

On this front, the Silicon Valley and Wall Street folks who vote Democratic are no different from the industrialists who vote Republican. Sure, there are exceptions, but they prove the rule.

The real problem is that we live in a time when folks — but especially rich and well-educated members of our “cognitive elite” — are also obsessed with identity, dignity, and such. And these they tend not to accord to those without means. This might be more true than ever in a world where the experiences of common citizenship are getting more rare. The gap between the classes in terms of habits, values, and future prospects grows.

Meanwhile, who can deny that there are more-intrusive efforts by the experts to script the lives of ordinary people? And that many people, in the name of dignity and identity, are in rebellion against the experts? It makes no difference, in many cases, whether the experts are right or wrong. It’s just a part of human nature to be in spirited rebellion against being manipulated by uncaring experts, by sophists of all stripes. It, more precisely, is a part of human liberty.

This kind of populism — which, after all, appears among both blacks and whites — isn’t going away. The future of conservatism depends on honoring it, and on refining and enlarging it in the service of the truth we all share in common about human liberty and dignity.

This isn’t an argument for voting Trump, of course. Trump is a flimflam man now in way over his head, a self-obsessed amateur being sliced and diced by every respectable expert in our country. Don’t worry! There’s no way in heck he will come close to winning.

It’s an argument for respecting part of the impulse that leads so many Americans, however mistakenly, to vote for Trump and Sanders.