More Recommended Reading:

1. "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad" - Fareed Zakaria (April 2003)

2. "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People" - Toby Young (June 2003)

Strange bed-fellows, you might think.

(Indeed they are. One is a serious work of scholarship. The other the rants of a failed New Yorker.)

What on earth do they have in common?

I'll tell you -

Look beyond Toby's rants, focus on his frequent philosophic digressions on the nature of American society, then meld it with Zakaria's own message concerning the role elites (should) play in shaping that same society... and, strange as it may sound, you get perfectly good --

Synthesis.