“What we really need to do around here is to shoot a few more intellectuals” - Nikita Kruschev
Milton Friedman was an intellectual, but he wasn’t part of the “elite.” He believed in good for the common individual and believed that individual freedom was the road to a happy and peaceful society.
It is the “elitist” attitudes of intellectuals and academics that cause them usually to excuse and be apologists for big government. It’s their big blind spot.
The premise of America is the divine worth of the individual and his right to life, liberty and pursuits for happiness, not the glories of government. The intellectual elite seem to have no interest in the common individual. The intellectual elite is what started Fabian Socialism and the parade of horribles that have followed.