MOST “PROGRESSIVE” CAUSES ARE: Obsessing Over Elite College Admissions Is the Opposite of Progressive. “Those elite places are scarce. According to Pew, they represent just 4.1% of student enrollment: roundabout 18 out of every thousand graduating seniors. It just so happens that American society is organized in such a way that access to the very highest sphere of economic and social success is, with rare exceptions, limited to people who snatch one of those spots. Those elite spots represent the single entry point into the American ruling class: naturally how they are distributed is of intense interest… to the American elite.”

Plus: “To be on the left used to mean to center the interests of the 982 over the interests of the 18. For a century and a half since the modern left first emerged, it knew that its job was to champion the interests of what Marxists used to call “the masses”—the vast majority of people systemically excluded from the top spots in society. For 150 years, the left understood its role to be to improve their lot, not to vie for admission into the elite that stood over them. Not anymore. The reason seems plain enough: the people who run the elite media, advocacy, and educational institutions that dominate civil discourse are overwhelmingly graduates of highly selective colleges themselves. Whether they’re white, black, Latino, or Asian, they’re almost all from the handful of highly selective colleges and universities to which affirmative action effectively applied.”