This weekend, the Wall Street Journal published a think-piece by Joseph Epstein about the downfall of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and what that's done to America. Epstein complains about meritocrats (like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, he sniffs) who go to good schools and achieve great things, but don't have the character of people who were raised in the WASP tradition:

Trust, honor, character: The elements that have departed U.S. public life with the departure from prominence of WASP culture have not been taken up by the meritocrats. Many meritocrats who enter politics, when retired by the electorate from public life, proceed to careers in lobbying or other special-interest advocacy. University presidents no longer speak to the great issues in education but instead devote themselves to fundraising and public relations, and look to move on to the next, more prestigious university presidency.

A financier I know who grew up under the WASP standard not long ago told me that he thought that the subprime real estate collapse and the continuing hedge-fund scandals have been brought on directly by men and women who are little more than "greedy pigs" (his words) without a shred of character or concern for their clients or country. Naturally, he added, they all have master's degrees from the putatively best business schools in the nation.

Thus far in their history, meritocrats, those earnest good students, appear to be about little more than getting on, getting ahead and (above all) getting their own. The WASP leadership, for all that may be said in criticism of it, was better than that.

This is some classic bullshit: People were better back in the good old days, things were better back then, and everybody is a lot worse, now that the people who used to be in power are out of power. Never mind that the good old days were only good for the people who look and behave like the people in power—straight, white, Christian—and never mind that the scales are still tipped heavily toward WASPs. Kids these days don't understand dignity, goddamnit, and Epstein is very sad about it.