The larger phenomenon here, however, is a crisis not of ignorant
masses, but of elites who have failed. All societies, except perhaps the
Greek city-states of antiquity, are led by elites or, as the great
sociologist Digby Baltzell described them, establishments. As long as
they provide their societies with some consequential benefit
(prosperity, success in war, or political leadership), can absorb
talented non-elite members, and display virtues that the rest of society
values (public service, self-sacrifice, or military courage) they
deserve to hang on and do.
The elites of London, like those of this country and large parts of
the Western world, appear in many ways to have failed those tests. The
crash of 2008 crystallized a view of the financial class in particular
as reckless, self-dealing manipulators. As Joel Kotkin among others has
pointed out, by virtue of how our education systems have evolved, elite
youth increasingly marry one another, and the prosperous can (and do)
give their children every leg up—which poorer parents cannot hope to
match. Meanwhile, the political and intellectual elites deserve, and
receive, very little credit for patriotism or courage, because they do
not exhibit much. As manifested on campuses in Great Britain as here,
they increasingly show themselves intolerant of dissenting opinions, and
inclined to bully because they have forgotten (or never learned) how to
argue.
The failure of courage, Solzhenitsyn said at a particularly dark
point in the Cold War, was in danger of becoming a distinguishing
feature of the West. The young people who talked petulantly of
abandoning their country because of a vote they did not like were bright
graduates of the best universities in the English-speaking world—and
severely deficient in pluck. They had no notion of that patriotism which
says that when your country is in trouble, you are supposed to fight it
out, not begin checking to see if Morgan Stanley is hiring in Madrid.
They are not fit to be trusted with political power.
And in the very intemperateness of their reaction lies one of the best reasons to think that Brexit is, with all its hazards, a good thing.