Meritocracy

In The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, Walter Isaacson treats meritocracy as a double-edged thread running from the Founding to the present. He argues that modern policies “led to the rise of a meritocratic elite in America based on educational credentials” — the economy and its rewards geared to those who went to college, leaving the 62 percent who never finished feeling resentful or blamed for being left behind. The book ties this credentialed-elite dynamic to the fracturing of common ground that democracy depends on.

The historical pivot is the contrast between Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Jefferson favored a “natural aristocracy” to replace hereditary aristocracy — his Notes on the State of Virginia proposed “raking” twenty of the best geniuses “from the rubbish” annually and dismissing the residue, an approach Isaacson says “did not turn out well” and came “at the expense of community and the American Dream.” Franklin, by contrast, “correctly saw the danger of creating a meritocratic aristocracy,” designing what became the University of Pennsylvania not to filter a new elite but to enrich all young people toward “true merit” — “an inclination joined with an ability to serve mankind.” The page connects to The Death of Expertise on the same credentialed-elite-and-discourse overlap.

Context: Meritocracy is the principle (and the social system) of allocating position and reward by demonstrated ability and achievement rather than inherited status; in modern critique it is often charged with hardening into a self-perpetuating credentialed elite.

Where this appears

• The Greatest Sentence Ever Written — central thread: the rise of a credential-based meritocratic elite, Jefferson’s “natural aristocracy,” and Franklin’s warning against a “meritocratic aristocracy.”