I think maybe ‘elite’ and ‘elitist’ are fundamentally different; the former stands for excellence, the latter for pretention.

Kipling, of recent note, nailed the difference when he wrote the anthem of modern Liberalism, “The Road-Song of the Bandar-Log.” The Bandar-Log are very much elitist without being at all elite.

Americans, I think, still appreciate the truly elite, which is why so many of us resent the elitists of the lumpen intelligentsia and all their empty noise.