As Ron Unz has shown, nowadays entry into the ivied gateways to power is by co-option, not merit.

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After hours of this dance with the elements, we repaired to the ivied big house which was the former holiday pad of the Marquis of Sligo, Baron of Mont Eagle and Earl of Altamont.

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This may be wishful thinking, but his essential point is a good one: namely that the boom years before the great recession put far more wealth in the hands of highly educated professionals than in earlier times, and that this class--Ivied, cosmopolitan, sophisticated in the ways of the knowledge economy--naturally gravitates toward liberal values and politics.

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