What toxic forces and pernicious ideas have brought American citizenship — a 233-year-old idea able to transcend the conditions of its birth and accept women and those of races and ethnicities different from the majority culture fully into the political commonwealth — to the brink?
Today the modern suburban everyman is becoming a nostalgic ideal rather than a vibrant reality. Indeed, the American middle class has lost economic ground for nearly a half century through mounting household debt, static wages, and record student-loan burdens. Without a middle class, society becomes bifurcated, splintering into one of modern masters and peasants. In that situation, the function of government is not to ensure liberty but to subsidize the poor to avoid revolution and to exempt the wealthy, who reciprocate by enriching and empowering the governing classes.
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