Modernism dislikes all types of elitism- except for meritocracy.

When elite status is merited, according to this view, it is a good thing.

In such a society, our elites are:

"...made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians. These people, whose origins lay in the salaried middle class and the upper grades of the working class, had been shaped and brought together by the barren world of monopoly industry and centralized government."

Cool quote, right?

This was written by George Orwell in his description of Big Brother's society in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Some may think that a meritocracy is the same as Thomas Jefferson's "natural aristocracy," but in fact the roots of the two are quite different...