Meritocratic, but elitist nonetheless.
Meritocracies are elitist institutions, after all, though laudable ones.
This premise is inherently flawed. Taking liberals to task for the demise of standards, Vincent assumes that the classifications of ye olde Western canon were meritocratic, though they were not. The true challenges to the canon are to rid it of political, class, gender, and race bias, and to apply truly meritocratic standards in evaluating human achievement in the arts, letters, and philosophy. Our research indicates that voters are still more comfortable electing women to legislative positions than to executive positions. Until we break down gender barriers, we will continue to see a dearth of women in public office across the country.