ABSTRACT
The mass of people in the United States have not undergone much political change in the past decade. They support democratic institutions and accord legitimacy to their government. The revolutionaries of contemporary America do not seek to redistribute privilege from those who have it to those who do not. The great political changes in America have occurred within its voluble elites. Members of the radical elite are characterized by enormous hostility to what they perceive as the idiocy of mass taste. The conflict between the radical elite and the conservative mass is rooted in subcultural differences in American society. With the cultural differences between mass and elite in mind, it is worthwhile inquiring how youth is recruited into the radical elite rather than developing and maintaining an identification with the mass of Americans. While by ordinary standards members of the radical elite would be counted powerful, their taste for power grows with their fury at the vulgarization of American life.
