Humanism and meritocracy

Thought-provoking article in last month's Prospect magazine (read in the tea room, but also available free online: Michael Lind, The meritocratic mandarinate and its humanist culture cushioned mass democracy from the excesses feared by 19th-century liberals. Now the mandarins are in retreat will the nightmare of mobocracy come true?

In the late Victorian vision that created the meritocracy: "In addition to providing the education of the mandarins, the university, liberated from religion, would be the home of a secular but traditional pan-western high culture that would replace the Christian religion as the shared civilisation of Europe and its offshoots. In constitutional politics, the meritocratic mandarinate would moderate tendencies toward demagogy, plutocracy and special-interest corruption by supplying the leaders of the career services within government and the informal establishment outside of it."