[newsclues]

There is no tradition of American elites joining government for public service, other than a small group who joins the State Dept to control foreign policy.

There is no American nobility who joins government consistently to make a positive impact in America for Americans.

[twoodfin]

This is a strange claim. The Ivy League is wildly over represented in upper echelons of all three branches of government.

[ModernMech]

Anyone can join an Ivy League school though. Thousands join every year. Not just anyone can join the nobility.

Sure some of those are legacies, but many are not as well. Every Harvard class has nobodies from nowhere.

You just don’t see the same mobility in other systems. England likes their story about random boys drawing swords from stones and becoming kings, but that just doesn’t happen. Sure maybe our system is not 100% egalitarian, but it’s an improvement I think.

[twoodfin]

I was interpreting “nobility” in a way that made the dig at Foggy Bottom make sense.

I completely agree that even an imperfect meritocracy of elites beats a hereditary one.