are of all rich democracies the less mobile country now, because you are more likely to stay in the station of which you are born in america than any other advanced democracy, so people cannot move up the class ladder in the country like the myth of how it was. that is the reality in the post world war period, but that is over and in that term we are no longer exceptional in the terms of the mobility. and this is where the two-sided angst of exception exceptionalism, and particularly in focusing in on the economy of it. we are the horacio al jer story, and slavery, and wealth built on the backs of unpaid labor at the same time that we are also both of them are true, and it is not that the narrative of slavery wrtakes out hor h ratio alger. well, there is an expectation that has developed over the last year, and we do have a welfare state. there is an expectation that the
earned to something that we expect. that is the problem. i i find that to be a really useful intervention, this idea that it is not bestowed upon us but that we earn it, and it does make me wonder about the notion of taxes and the idea of shared sacrifice being part of the fact that we determine that we are exceptional. well, the only place where american exceptionalism is embedded is the idea of individual schisms and individuals are exceptional because they work hard and now nobody wants to be exceptional in the taxes. and i am individually exceptional and it does not translate to me giving money to everybody else to do something. so this is the place where the ideal of exceptionalism is broken in a way. i would say firstly that america is exceptional but exceptional only to the case that it will wo work on the problem, and what you are saying here is that is true, that we have earned it, but we don t know how to keep it. it is not brokenb, but the concept of american
problem. the united states has not always stepped in when there have been genocides even. in the 90s we did not intervene in row wan dashgs and in the genocide there, and we watched slaughter happen in the former yugoslavia for two to three years before backing into that one, and syria is another case. on a moral sense, yes, we clearly should be doing more. this is obviously complicated involving iran and believe it or not involves the price of gas here in the united states, and if you are thinking about this like in a geostrategic sense, you are thinking that if that regime falls, it is much better for that regime to be pushed out from inside syria than for the united states to be seen as taking one regime out, and then getting stuck with the problem of imposing another. so from the strategic sense, there is a reason to stay into margins, if you will. but it is uncomfortable to watch no doubt. and that is the problem of where we are at in terms of the exceptionalism today.
and equal. and for years say for white americans, and the mainstream americans, and they were not exceptional for everybody in the pre-civil rights era, and when we see the clip of obama speaking like that, it seems like a lifetime ago. it does. i agree with you and admire that you are willing to say, no, it is not like that anymore and it is heartbreaking to me this is the reality, and the other thing that you have to remember is that when you inject people s faith-based values into the equation, it is more difficult, because when people believe something because of the faith, they won t change their minds because of the statistics or the political policy, so that makes the exceptionalism more polarized. i want to go back to the point of the feeling that part of what i heard you say that if i don t believe what the kids are doing better than i, and sure a shared struggle, but if i don t believe that it is an uptick and the kids can do
of people anyway, and here comes some politicians happy to exploit the fear and telling you that some immigrant is going to take your job and that is a basic fear that people have, that somebody is coming in to work for less than you do, and we have a dysfunctional immigration policy and undermining our own economy everyday because we won t let in the immigrants who are job creators, and by the way, the statistics are clear on this, the most dynamic small business owners are immigrants, the people who come here and start businesses. immigrants start businesses at a way higher proportion than people here. and we are shutting them out and saying, well, we are just going to somehow find other ways to fix the economy. it is crazy. youthful intervention, and the pie shrinks and economic anxiety increases. and u.n. monitors are investigating yet another massacre where dozens of women and children were killed. speaking of american