David Brooks lately published a column in the Times, “Why Our Elites Stink,” faulting the new elite for a lack of a sense of “leadership” and “service.” He often speaks of the old WASP leadership in the column:

a more diverse and meritocratic elite has replaced the Protestant Establishment. People are more likely to rise on the basis of grades, test scores, effort and performance. Yet, as this meritocratic elite has taken over institutions, trust in them has plummeted. It’s not even clear that the brainy elite is doing a better job of running them than the old boys’ network…. The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service. Today’s elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership code. The language of meritocracy (how to succeed) has eclipsed the language of morality (how to be virtuous).

At the American Conservative, Scott McConnell notes that in an earlier book, Brooks acknowledged that Jews had played a large role in the transformation of Establishment cultural values. Brooks wrote, “the Jews were the vanguard of a social movement that over the course of the 20th century transformed the American university system and the nature of the American elite.”

McConnell adds: