Samson
Póg Mo Thóin
I have to agree with Dave on that one. Herman Cain's dad, for instance, was a chauffeur and his mom was a maid. And look at what he has accomplished and now he is running for POTUS. I can point to my own family and my own life to demonstrate that nobody is confined by the circumstances of his/her birth in this country. Disadvantaged? Yes. In a situation where you have to work harder than the other guy? Yes. That happens and is sometimes the luck of the draw. But that is very different from a caste system.
That is one of the traditional values that I think should be emphasized in the schools and by everybody. If you are born poor, you don't have to stay poor. If you are ignorant there are limitless opportunities to educate yourself. Some of our most distinguished citizens would have been called 'disadvantaged' in their childhood and youth, and yet rose above their circumstances to achieve great things. Nobody should accept being a victim in this country but instead take advantages of the limitless opportunities that our Constitution affords us. Stop blaming and resenting the other guy and get busy.
I suppose in the strictest sense, as "Caste" is definded in Victorian England, or contemporary India, the word cannot be strictly applied anywhere. Basically this means if you are born into a certain socio-economic structure, then you will spend your life there. However, there are exceptions to this rule in England, India, and of course the USA.
My comment about caste is more related to the advantages of birth: To believe that if you are born into a wealthy family in the USA, then you have no more advantage than anyone born into a "middle caste (class)" family, is ludicrous.
Samson...don't you think 'ludicrous' is laying it on a bit too thick.
"I lived for about a decade, on and off, in France and later moved to the United States. Nobody in their right mind would give up the manifold sensual, aesthetic and gastronomic pleasures offered by French savoir-vivre for the unrelenting battlefield of American ambition were it not for one thing: possibility.
You know possibility when you breathe it. For an immigrant, it lies in the ease of American identity and the boundlessness of American horizons after the narrower confines of European nationhood and the stifling attentions of the European nanny state, which has often made it more attractive not to work than to work. High French unemployment was never much of a mystery."
Roger Cohen: One France is enough - The New York Times
I can testify to the truth of that quote.
I'm not saying that the possibility doesn't exist in the USA to move from one "class" to another. I also don't believe it is impossible to move from one class in France to another class.
However, in either place, France, the USA, or whatever, being born into the wealthiest class will have its undeniable advantages, and those are inheritable. We don't have Dukes, or Earls: We DO have Kennedy's and Bush's and Rockefeller's. Sure, their dynesties don't extend back to the Norman Invasion, but this is only because the Normans didn't invade North America.