This aristocracy of the talented is so contrary to equality and antithetical to our concept of social fairness that we should be surprised it still exists. Meritocracy simply shuffles the decks of who succeeds, compared to earlier systems of privilege, and not as much as you might believe. The game is still rigged; it just justifies itself with an

It’s not that behavioral traits aren’t heritable. It’s that what’s heritable underdescribes us as individuals, is unable to say anything of value about the small differences that make us who we are.

Genetic advantage only implies greater inherent worth if we decide it does.

strengths and weaknesses, our abilities and skills and faculties. This is what Nagel calls constitutive moral luck.

our dogged commitment to raising college completion rates is a mistake; if we presume that there is an actual underlying difference in ability between those with degrees and those without, we risk engaging in cargo cult public policy.2

Positive liberty, in contrast, involves rights to actually do and have things.

This all contributes to the phenomenon of tourist teachers, those who dip their toes in the water of the teaching profession and then move on to their “real careers.” The ultimate example is Teach For America, the program that sends chipper young grads from elite colleges into the classroom for a few years, treating children and schools like fodder

All human beings are of equal worth, as human beings. All deserve equal political rights, equal treatment under the law, and equal dignity. The reality of differing individual talents does nothing to change that. And when we presume otherwise, we instrumentalize human life and contribute to precisely the kinds of inegalitarian thinking we should

Next is the simple (liberal, capitalist, and American) value that holds self-sufficiency and self-control as the highest virtues. America’s mythology is the mythology of the self-made man; our folk tales are stories of individuals who determined their own destiny. Remember the lesson from middle school: if you only believe, you will achieve. The