"One of the few things that both left and right can agree upon nowadays is that both the "establishment" and the meritocracy ought to be overthrown. But in all of these discussions, there's little awareness that there is a history and a scholarly literature behind these concepts. And all of that in one way or another draws upon the work of the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell, who was born in 1915 and died in 1996 and spent most of his academic career at the University of Pennsylvania."

Aaron M. Renn, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has dug deep into the scholarship of Baltzell and the larger question of how the "establishment" has impacted American politics. He chats with Geoff Kabaservice about his findings.