““The people could still have their republic, but much legislative power would be shifted out of an elected body and into the hands of the right sort of people. Rather than narrowly a matter of racism, this has been a transfer of legislative power to the knowledge class – meaning not a class defined in Marxist or other economic terms but those persons whose identity or sense of selfworth centers on their knowledge. More than merely the intelligentsia, this class includes all who are more attached to the authority of knowledge than to the authority of local political communities. Which is not to say that they have been particularly knowledgeable, but that their sense of affinity with cosmopolitan knowledge, rather than local connectedness, has been the foundation of their influence and identity.””
