In Baltzell’s view, an aristocracy driven by talent is an essential feature of any republic. The challenge is ensuring that such aristocracies remain open to new members and do not descend into mere caste structures, which close their ranks along racial or religious lines. “If an upper class degenerates into a caste,” Baltzell wrote, “the

The public will forgive many failures and sins of the political class. But the electorate will not overlook a systemic inability to harness technology for the purpose of effectively delivering the goods and services that are essential to our lives.

We have today privileged a kind of ease in corporate life, a culture of agreeableness that can move institutions away, not toward, creative output.

The grandiose rallying cry of a generation of founders in Silicon Valley was simply to build. Few asked what needed to be built, and why.

The employees at Google who resisted leveraging the machinery of their company in service of building software for the U.S. military know what they oppose but not what they are for. The problem that we are describing is not a principled commitment to pacifism or nonviolence. It is a more fundamental abandonment of belief in anything.

The soul of the country was at stake, having been abandoned in the name of inclusivity. The problem is that tolerance of everything often constitutes belief in nothing.

At many of the most successful technology giants in Silicon Valley, there is a culture of what one might call constructive disobedience. The creative direction that an organization’s most senior leaders provide is internalized but often reshaped, adjusted, and challenged by those charged with executing on their directives in order to produce

Our geopolitical adversaries are ruled by individuals who are often closer to founders, in the sense Silicon Valley uses the term, than traditional politicians. Their fates and personal fortunes are so deeply intertwined with those of the nations whose authoritarian regimes they oversee that they behave as owners, in that they have a direct stake

When emerging technologies that give rise to wealth do not advance the broader public interest, trouble often follows. Put differently, the decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.