Some cultural pathologies enlarge to fill an ethical vacuum:

Despite the pose of the heroic intellectual speaking truth to power, many or even most of those whose good fortune rests on paper credentials or election rather than on actual, provable achievement are either cowards or opportunists. They will not do anything truly courageous when it comes to breaking with the fashionable consensus. When once brave intellectuals defied tyrants who shouted “off with their heads!,” now they dare not say anything that might lead to “off with their grants!” “Off with their reputation!” “Off with their invitations to nice parties!” They fear less the country going to hell than being identified as one of those unwashed, ignorant, backwoods fools who actually think the Constitution should be respected, free speech is a basic right, and unlimited debt is bad.

I am not joking. These are people who can ridicule the masses as an ignorant mob and weep over the poor and downtrodden at the same time. With full good conscience that they are simultaneously superior and compassionate, they look down on those from most American states, small business people, and the hardworking masses as their inferiors. In Marxist terms, they have put the yuppie upper-middle class in place of the proletariat. We are looking at an establishment-approved program of snobbishness as virtue.

— Barry Rubin, “Why Is the Political Situation So Bleak? Because the Elite Fears Being Unfashionable More Than Being Wrong”, PJ Media, April 6, 2012.