People are right to point to the burgeoning professional class.
In so doing, we become less and less able to form the mutual commitments that are the roots of community. The professionalization of our relationships gnaws away at the emotional ligatures that bind communities together and, as community is disabled at the local level, so is the hope for a nation of spirited people. These are especially pernicious, in his view, because they undermine a community's confidence in its ability to address its own problems, all the while masquerading as its more knowledgeable substitutes. Not surprisingly, perhaps, given the globalization of the economy and its increasing social and economic stratification. Yet one finds oneself hoping that so lucid a critic would have some guiding insights.