I SEE my colleague has posted on the same aggravating Charles Murray op-ed I wish to discuss, but I think our comments are more complementary than redundant.

What is "the elite"? A principled answer to this question would be mighty helpful for evaluating Mr Murray's contention that the tea-party movement is enlivened by opposition to what he calls the "New Elite", which is alleged to be "isolated from mainstream America and ignorant about the lives of ordinary Americans." For the purposes of his op-ed, Mr Murray seems to identify the New Elite with the graduates of Ivy League and Ivy-League league schools. But this seems more likely to confuse than enlighten. While nobody doubts that Yalies and Princetonians are more likely than Jayhawks and Hoosiers to soar in the stratosphere of cultural influence, this is a huge country and Ivy-ish grads are insufficiently numerous really to throng the halls of power. Every year or so we hear that a declining number of Fortune 500 corporations are helmed by Ivy Leaguers. I don't believe much has changed since Gregg Easterbrook's 2004 article, "Who Needs Harvard", in which he reports that:

Fully half of U.S. senators are graduates of public universities, and many went to "states"—among them Chico State, Colorado State, Iowa State, Kansas State ... Or consider the CEOs of the top ten Fortune 500 corporations: only four went to elite schools... Or consider Rhodes scholars: this year only sixteen of the thirty-two American recipients hailed from elite colleges. Steven Spielberg was rejected by the prestigious film schools at USC and UCLA; he attended Cal State Long Beach, and seems to have done all right for himself.

Chuck Grassley, a senator from Iowa, is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa (the Sorbonne of Blackhawk County!) and one of the most powerful men in Washington. Mike Duke, the chief of Wal-Mart, is a graduate of Georgia Tech and boss of the world's largest corporation. Roger Ailes, president of America's top cable news channel, is a product of Ohio University. These men have ascended to the tip-top of our society's power elite, despite their state-college pedigrees. Yet one doesn't sense a lot of tea-party animosity against stolidly Republican Senators, the directors of mammoth Arkansas-based corporations, or Glenn Beck's boss. Maybe these guys are the "old" elite?

At the end of his column, Mr Murray admits that he doubts "if there is much to differentiate the staff of the conservative Weekly Standard from that of the liberal New Republic, or the scholars at the American Enterprise Institute from those of the Brookings Institution, or Republican senators from Democratic ones." Yet it seems that in his hazy scheme, a multi-millionaire Oral Roberts alum who loves NASCAR and attends an evangelical mega-church won't count as a member of the elite. But one suspects that Mr Murray's Ivy-going AEI intern makes the cut. What's the idea?

The idea, it seems to me, is that the culture of right-leaning, religious, white people—the culture of "real America"—is somehow under siege. By whom? The elite! Who are they? Mr Murray seems to posit that the elite are the chi-chi snots who do not partake of the red-blooded culture of "Red America", but who, rather outrageously, proudly espouse a competing culture. These are the left-leaning, less-religious people—mostly city-dwelling and still mostly white—without whom the wholesome beliefs and values of suburban Kansas would reign from the Castro to Williamsburg. Why are editorial interns at the Weekly Standard part of the elite? Because, despite their conservative politics, they live like secular urban liberals, like "ignorant and isolated" deracinated strangers in their own homeland, like people who have never read "Left Behind". And why isn't, say, MIT-educated Charles Koch part of Mr Murray's elite. Because, despite his billions, he's a god-fearing denizen of Wichita, I suppose.

Polls show that, in addition to being predominantly white and Republican, tea-partiers are wealthier and better-educated than the typical American. The proletariat they are not. Andrew Gelman's terrific book "Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State," documents the stark partisan division within the American upper class, which I think helps us understand what's really going on. Very roughly, churchgoing non-coastal rich people are Republicans, while the more secular coastal rich are Democrats. What we are now seeing is not a showdown between the vast non-ideological middle-class and some rising Acai-swilling, assortatively-mating bobo aristocracy, but a standoff between rival elites. The tea party is a movement of relatively well-to-do, relatively religious citizens aroused by the conservative identity politics of a handful of elite right-wing opinion-makers who seek to unseat their liberal counterparts.

It is a neat trick. Conservative elites pretend to be part of a marginalised cultural force while at the same time orchestrating an electoral bloodbath led by America's least marginalised people. The fact that this is working so well tells us a lot about who the elites really are and where the power really lies.