The old-fashioned notions of “noblesse oblige” — or the idea that the elite have a moral obligation to serve society — have largely gone out of fashion among the contemporary elite, said New York Times columnist Bret Stephens at a Thursday lecture at BYU.
This, of course, is not universally true, he said. But there is little doubt that “we live in a country, in which what we broadly call the ‘elite’ seems increasingly disconnected from and often contemptuous of the views, habits and affinities of much of the rest of the country.”
In his remarks, which kicked off BYU’s 2026 Initiative for Peacemaking Conference, Stephens sought to explore what defines the elite and the dividing line between them and the non-elite in the United States. He also charged universities and individuals to be stewards of change in what is now a polarized landscape.
The potential for change “falls to you,” Stephens said. “It falls to schools like this — the great and the large universities … that seek to advance the stock of knowledge and the cause of understanding while remaining profoundly attuned to traditions of place and faith.”
It falls to universities seeking “to turn out graduates who can operate confidently and knowledgeably and charitably” in their distinct spheres, and by so doing, “bridge divides and break through that veil of mutual incomprehension and increasing distrust” that exists today.
This is no small task, Stephens noted.
“But neither is it a small task to build oases in the desert. So who better than you, here and now?”
What defines the ‘elite’?
The disconnect between the elite and the rest of the country is “both the defining and most damaging fact of political life in America today,” Stephens told the crowd of listeners gathered in the BYU Varsity Theatre.
This disconnect is injurious to the country as a whole, he said. It is insulting to those outside of the elite and it is harmful to the elite themselves, which “can be a great national blessing, if — and that’s a big ‘if’ — they are shaped in the right way.”
So, who are the elite and what defines them?
Stephens explained that money, power, geographic stereotypes and ancestry do not define the elite, though it may seem like it in some cases.
The true “dividing line between elite and non-elite America” is the line that separates those who live in what can be termed the “economy of words” and the “economy of stuff,” Stephens said.
The economy of words predominantly constitutes today’s American elite, he said, and includes under its umbrella: pundits, politicians, reporters, editors, publishers, attorneys, financial analysts, therapists, counselors, academic and religious leaders, etc.
The economy of stuff, Stephens added, is “pretty much everyone else: people whose business it is to make, shape, move (and) fix inventory and sell tangible objects.”
The economy of words is “the economy that I inhabit,” Stephens said. It is “an economy that rewards me for producing sentences, paragraphs, thoughts, speeches and occasionally — I hope — a few memorable phrases.”
The economy of stuff includes “every farmer and factory worker, every truck driver and logistician, every salesperson and repairman, every wholesaler and retailer, every contractor and construction worker, every waiter and cook, every soldier and first responder, every manufacturer and merchant, every nurse and doctor, every banker and car dealer, and of course, all funeral home directors.”
What divides the elite from the non-elite in America?
The great divide between those in the economy of words and the economy of stuff is caused by a lack of comprehension between both groups, Stephens told listeners.
“It’s not simply the fact that we so often have opposing views based on our different experiences and perspectives,” he said. It is “that we only glimpse the other side through a veil of mutual and increasingly antagonistic incomprehension.”
When one lives in the economy of words, Stephens said, it is “both tempting and easy to forget the distinction between saying and doing, between the loftiness of one’s beliefs and the plausibility of putting those beliefs into actual everyday, affordable and sustainable practice.”
Universal high quality health care sounds great, Stephens said, posing an example. But “how do we avoid the shortages, long waiting times, declining quality of care and hard fiscal tradeoffs that are the invariable byproducts of attempting to pay less for more?”
The converse is also sometimes true, Stephens said. “People who live in the economy of stuff have a hard time understanding those of us who are part of the economy of words.”
This is why “you often hear the phrase, typically uttered by ‘stuff people’ against the ‘words people,’ that we don’t really understand the ‘real world,’” Stephens added.
“But leaving aside the epistemological question of what really is the real world, the phrase both misapprehends and denigrates what the economy of words does for the economy as a whole.
“To take just my corner of it, journalism: How can you manage a moderate economy without the transmission of timely, accurate and abundant information? (And) how do we expose public corruption or incompetence without the mechanisms of modern media?”
Still, Stephens noted the mutual incomprehension between those in the economy of words and those in the economy of stuff is “not symmetrical.”
“The people who live in the economy of stuff have, in my experience, a far better understanding of the economy of words than the other way around,” he said. Put another way, “the words people are much more clueless than the stuff people.”
What can be done
Stephens called on individuals and universities to develop the habits of curiosity and “the free mind.” He said one of the tragedies seen in too much of American higher education is that it has “joined the business of imparting certitude rather than curiosity.”
The business of true universities should be “imparting the habits of the free mind,” Stephens said.
These habits include listening, engaging in conversation with those of opposing views, practicing intellectual humility and asking questions about one’s own side without losing one’s convictions.
This kind of “dynamic tension” is a vanishing art, Stephens said. But it should be modeled and practiced by individuals and universities.
Of his own efforts, Stephens said: “I am trying hard to make the effort to understand this country of ours, not least by reexamining my own priors, my own biases, my own predilections and listening hard to people whose lives, experiences and opinions are far from my own.”
He encouraged listeners to practice the same and called on universities to help develop individuals who learn to bridge divides across the economies of words and stuff and break through the existing veil of “mutual comprehension and increasing distrust.”