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you actually believe that it is coherent at any level to explain the outcomes of social problems with reference to arbitrary subjective attributes? do you really believe that class position is a function of "character and behaviour"? on what possible basis? in the context of a profoundly unequal social reality, it seems somewhere between pollyanna and fundamentally dishonest to maintain that position.
"founding values"???---on what possible planet are these relevant directly now? even in the 1830s, de tocqueville argued that the entire illusion of jeffersonian pseudo-democracy was close to being wiped out by capitalism--by 2004, these values, and the social situation that made them correspond to anything material, have been wiped out for at least 150 years. i am familiar with the pseudo-theoretical justification for this kind of delusion, which lies with the "original intent" doctrine propagated by mediocrities on the order of edwin meese and fundamental to variants of ideologically rooted social mobility for the far right...but this doctrine is totally indefenisble on any grounds. this flimsiness explains why it only functions in circles tightly circumscribed by rightwing think tanks--outside the montonous circle jerk of these spaces, the notion of "original intent" has no currency whatsoever.
your position, btw, is completely antithetical to any kind of democratic politics--the idea that questions of social position can be explained by reference to some hallucination of individual character is of a piece with the idea of natural hierarchies--a notion that we have seen over and over through the past 200 years, which underpins any number of racist-to-fascist ideologies. the only thing surprising is to find that even now people still operate within these ridiculous, outmoded and dangerous frames of reference.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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