Every society has a ruling class, and the ruling class of the United States hates this country. Its members hate the history, the heritage, the religion, and the people that define this nation.

Barack Obama announced his intention to “fundamentally transform” the United States, and the Democrats have joined forces with a larger percentage of Republicans to do exactly that. Both parties either actively encourage or fail to prevent mass immigration, the tearing down of our public monuments, and the destruction of traditional families. The future of the United States depends on the creation and instillation of a ruling class that respects and loves the nation it oversees and is deeply invested in the welfare of her people.

There will always be a ruling class, but America deserves to be led by elites who earned their positions through right action and loyalty to their community.

The American project began as a rejection of the stiff class distinctions rooted in European nobility and an embrace of republican government. It is, perhaps, this inherent distaste for a formalized ruling class that caused modern Americans to become apathetic about the character of those who held elected office.

Without a distinctive marker to identify the unified interests of those who held power, many voters came to believe that the democratic process itself would be sufficient to limit the avarice of politicians. Elected officials who felt no duty to, or connection with, those they represented quickly discovered how to conspire with other politicians to enrich themselves and avoid accountability.

Although America’s founders rejected the formalization of a ruling class, they understood that natural aristocracy was an inevitable and desirable aspect of human organization. Great families became pillars of colonial life and helped to build the churches, schools, community associations, and fraternal orders that were central to the functioning of the early states. Alexis de Tocqueville in “Democracy in America” identified vigorous participation in these voluntary associations as a uniquely American trait that allowed the young nation to flourish. American citizens could not rely on the inherited architecture of the Old World, so leadership arose through organizations that built a robust social fabric outside the direct influence of the state.

This natural aristocracy emerged across every discipline. Politics, military command, economic production, and religious leadership were guided by great families passing their knowledge, training, and station from father to son. While this continuity was often familial, it was not titles of nobility conferred by birth that granted authority. The natural aristocracy had to justify itself through action, each generation proving itself worthy of leadership or stepping aside to make room for those with the vision necessary to guide the community.

The modern ruling elite has forgotten these obligations to the common man over which it presides. The American billionaire class thinks nothing of buying a company, dismantling its assets, devastating the community it once employed, and shipping the jobs and profit off to another country. Leaders no longer emerge from improving their communities but instead gain wealth or power without any obligation to those who helped them.

Even the titans of industry during the Gilded Age still felt a duty to build libraries, churches, universities, monuments, and other public works that enriched the life of the average citizen. Most philanthropy practiced by modern tycoons operates on a global scale, often with the intension of undermining the well-being of those currently residing in the United States.

While the ruling elite has largely abandoned the people its members were meant to serve, the average American has facilitated this alienation in his own way. The organic aristocracy of the United States felt a duty to the community because its members hailed from the institutions that defined that particular people. Political, religious, and economic leadership were primarily a local phenomenon that had to appeal to a specific region and the needs of its residence. Scale is the enemy of particularity, and as the organizations that managed social foundations consolidated across multiple regions, the leadership of those organizations became less grounded in community and more interested in the interests of their shared ruling class.

Americans have been willing to hand over many responsibilities that once defined these local and regional organizations to larger central bureaucracies in the name of efficiency and expertise. Educating children, caring for the elderly, feeding the hungry, and providing mutual aid in a time of need were all duties that once fell to the family, church, or local civic organization.

Local leadership earned authority by organizing essential community functions, and the power of those organic aristocrats was tied directly to the people they served. By handing these duties over to the central government or national organizations, a large amount of personal freedom was temporarily created as the average person no longer felt the constant need to participate in local organizations to maintain his well-being.

But this freedom was only a temporary illusion as elites operating distant organizations demanded increasing ideological conformity while treating their charges as interchangeable cogs.

This process has created a learned helplessness, teaching people they can no longer manage basic social functions without the massive bureaucracies operated by credentialed experts. Most people cannot imagine educating their own children or pooling together to fund the medical treatment of their friends, if they even have children or friends to speak of. This also deprives citizens of the local and regional structures necessary to develop leadership skills and prove themselves to their communities.

Organic opportunities for social elevation are stripped away and the only opportunity for advancement is centralized into massive and distant institutions like elite universities. Members of the ruling elite cultivated there have no loyalty to the far-flung regions they manage and develop a unified class culture and interest that deviates radically from the good of their subjects.

To rebuild a natural aristocracy that bases its power on community well-being, we must create alternative institutions outside the centralized state apparatus. As an example, in Florida the state legislature has decoupled educational funding from public schools, allowing parents to more easily homeschool their children or send them to a religious school that shares their beliefs. This empowers parents and encourages them to once again embrace their responsibility as the primary educator in their child’s life.

As federal programs become less reliable and more hostile to the people they ostensibly serve, fraternal orders, churches, and other civic organizations must fill the gap. This transfer of responsibility will not just help those in need but will also create opportunities for young leaders invested in their community to secure real influence.

The process of reweaving America’s social fabric will be slow, but with diligent and committed leadership, a new class of aristocrats can arise. One which is dedicated not to the interests of a global neoliberal project but instead to the well-being of a particular people and way of life.

There will always be a ruling class, but the United States deserves to be led by elites who earned their positions through right action and loyalty to their community. The American form of self-government has always required the vigorous participation in local institutions, and the time to build is now.