CHARLES MURRAY ON THE THE NEW AMERICAN DIVIDE. “People are starting to notice the great divide. The tea party sees the aloofness in a political elite that thinks it knows best and orders the rest of America to fall in line. The Occupy movement sees it in an economic elite that lives in mansions and flies on private jets. Each is right about an aspect of the problem, but that problem is more pervasive than either political or economic inequality. What we now face is a problem of cultural inequality. . . . We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America’s core cultural institutions.”

This is the theme of his new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, which the Insta-Wife is reading. It’s a sort of Moynihan Report for white America, which seems to be undergoing the same sort of cultural decline that black America did in the 1960s.