IT'S A PURITAN NATION:

Yet it's also possible to see improbable success. The WASPs were inspired by a dream of national renewal based on professional administration, moral formation by elite educational institutions, and a new kind of cultural institution independent of both the state and aristocratic patrons. That vision is still with us even if the WASPs are not.

Start with administrative bodies staffed by a professional civil service -- the "deep state" as it has recently become known. The alphabet soup of federal agencies has its origin in WASP-led reform movements of the 1870s. It was a vivid revival of old conflicts when Robert Mueller, an anachronistically perfect WASP, briefly became the avatar of anti-Trump sentiment. Donald Trump, on the other hand, was formed by the corrupt patronage politics WASPs arose to resist.

Elite education also reflects more of the WASP heritage than we like to think. Standardized tests and affirmative action transformed the student body. But the Ivies and their imitators still practice higher education primarily as an exercise in selection and forming a ruling class. Classic WASP characteristics including athletic ability and assumed potential for leadership remain decisive for admission. 

Despite its impatience with the ostensibly benighted past, the moralistic progressivism that infuses colleges today echoes the WASP conviction that social reform is a product of personal virtue. Campus leftism is not about specific policies. It is an effort to create the right sort of people through structured forms of communal living. That's not Marxism. It's what "Cotty" Peabody was doing at Groton.

Finally, WASPs dreamed of replacing aristocratic patronage with enduring structures that would transcend the lifetimes and whims of their founders. In culture as in politics, they trusted professional management more than individual judgment.

The result was the charitable foundation, which reconciled the 19th century rivals of plutocracy and reform by placing portions of the great industrial fortunes under the control of WASP mandarins. Due to their wealth, prominence, and insulation from electoral pressure, such foundations still wield extraordinary influence. Their largesse set the agenda for scholarship, the arts, and political advocacy. 

These institutions are the real WASP legacy. Rather than the fussy conservatism depicted in pop culture, it's an inheritance of institutionalized progressivism that sees privilege as the means to moral ends, even when those ends are superficially revolutionary. 

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