But Murray's "new upper class" is smart. Not only crafty, but medically, statistically, verifiably smart. As the US elite marries within itself and passes the genetic baton to its children, the privilege that attaches to brains can be entrenched within a single generation. Two successful sharp cookies marry and bear sharp cookies: voilà, a self-sustaining upper class based not on historical injustice but merit — or merit of a kind.
I say "of a kind", because no one earns a high IQ; intelligence is one of the many socially valued attributes that either cropped up in the crib, or not — along with musical talent or a knack for ballroom dancing. Nevertheless, we do arguably prize intellect above all other qualities. Murray's observations about who gets ahead in the US these days and why is sure to jar with the more European outlook that rich folks at the top do not deserve their status or their income and if anything ought to be punished.
Moreover, potentially lurking in Murray's construct is an explosive corollary he never asserts outright: that the lower class is dumb. That, being dumb, they ended up at the bottom of the heap by an inexorable sorting process that's genetic — ergo, they're at the bottom because that's where they belong. Offended yet?
Murray's exclusive focus on whites is wise. He thus weeds out the confounds of race and immigration. Coming Apart is no paean to the genius of the upper echelon, either. The very values that helped to elevate this new upper class — industry, honesty, committed marriage, and religiosity — are fraying in the elect as well as among the hoi polloi. Murray chides the American elite for walling itself off from the vast bulk of the country's people and culture, and for hiding in a bland non-judgmentalism about single parenthood, poor educational attainment, and withdrawal from the workforce — established recipes for social disaster. Members of the new upper class are thus "keeping the goodies to themselves" by "failing to preach what they practise".
Murray's observations serve as a corrective to a fashionable European egalitarianism that we all know, in our heart of hearts, is rubbish. No, everyone is not the same. No, if you put a bunch of people in the same circumstances with the same opportunities, they are not all going to do equally well — some will fall behind, some will excel. And no, high earnings are not always the result of institutional injustice. After all, we can't push kids to work hard, do well in school, and strive for challenging jobs, and then tell them their success is merely an accident, or even an outrage. It isn't.
