Chris Bertram, who writes better than I do and appears to have a whole lot more time (hey, out in Blogland, how do you guys do it?), discusses Sullivan’s comments on social stratification and the consequences of the kind of insane inequality (which I am trying to label as SkyBox-ing) prevalent in America and Europe.
Part of his comments:

Andrew Sullivan is busy writing about the ‘overclass’, the super-rich. Of course, Sullivan being Sullivan he’s moved to assert that the vast inequalities that obtain in the world are inevitable, good and deserved. Of course, not all of his fellow conservatives are as sure as he is, Kevin Phillips is worried that you can’t sustain a genuine republic with the sort of inequality that obtains in America (and even in Britain today). And that’s an old worry, one that Montesquieu and Rousseau both articulated. If the public power, that should belong to everyone, is in fact at the behest of those whose wealth allows them to escape the problems of their compatriots, then alienation and cynicism will increasingly erode commitment to the political order. In the absence of a sense that citizens share one another’s fate then a republican or liberal polity will increasingly given way to a Hobbesian system where social peace is only maintained by changing the payoffs facing wrongdoers. (And my saying, yesterday, that retribution for crime in the UK should be swifter and more certain is a recognition that alienation here has become quite advanced.)

If you look at the “must-read” section below, you’ll see two books on legitimacy; you might guess that it’s an important topic to me.
It ought to be one to all of us. On a basic level, it implies that the allegiance and obedience the citizen offers to the state is earned and freely given from a core belief that the demands made are “legitimate”; that they serve some common interest in which the individual participates.
Look, you can’t have enough traffic police to enforce the laws everywhere. So obedience to traffic rules comes from two sources: First, a sense of “correctness”; a belief that the rules make sense, that we all benefit from the rule being followed, and that others will also follow the rule; Second, fear of punishment, either through direct consequences (an accident) or through the actions of other citizens or agents of the state (being threatened by someone you cut off, or being cited and fined by a police officer).
It ought to be obvious that the first source works better than the second. It works all the time, regardless of the state of enforcement; it is internalized so that each driver can freely respond to current situations. I’ll argue that it is morally better, as well, because it treats each driver as a responsible actor, rather than just a subject for enforcement.
But the first source depends on something which is in ever-shorter supply; a sense of the legitimacy of the rules, and a sense that one is connected to the others who are also bound by those rules. So why not run red lights?
Habermas and Schaar each have a different vision of why legitimacy is in short supply; they are rich and difficult to summarize, so I won’t right now. To those, I will add the simple fact of inequality as it exists today (and here I’ll poach from Montesquieu as noted by Bertram, above).
I’m talking about a level of ‘Gilded Age’ inequality that gives us Lizzie Grubman and all she represents, a sense of separation, entitlement, and inheritance which is mirrored by the people who read about her and are convinced that modern American society is structured for people like her, and not people like them.
The kind of separation between people in the SkyBoxes and the rest in the cheap seats.
And the consequence isn’t just bad views or a mild sense of disengagement between classes. It is a profound corrosion of the relations that tie society together, as those in the SkyBox decide that they are above the law, and those in the nosebleed section see no reason to obey, as the law does nothing for them.
So as the light turns yellow, they just gun it, and the rest of us just have to be very, very careful because we are the ones they hit.