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
despite our deep differences on policy issues american voters have traditionally shared substantial agreement on the core national values and the vision of the unified america is at the heart of the statement of then state senator barack obama at the 2004 democratic nastiona convention. the pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states, red states for republicans, and blue states for democrats. there is not a liberal america and a conservative america. there is the united states of america. well, actually, new data suggests that americans are more divided than we have been in the last 25 years. and the widest divide that separates us according the a pugh research center report poll released this week is not age, gender, race or class, but take a look at those, because they are actually stable over the
beliefs and whatever one s holy book is and the origin myths are, and set it down outside of faith, and read it as if it were this is what sort of happened on this day, i m not sure that, you know, pregnant virgins or stone tablets or anymore weird or odd or extraordinary than any other set of beliefs that are part of sort of faith claims. well, there are two things going on here. one is that americans don t know a lot about any faith other than their own and not just a problem with mormonism, and thinking of a great book called religious illiteracy, and americans practice faith more than western europe countries practice faith, but know less about everyone else s faith than the europeans do. and so religious illiteracy is an american problem that relates not only to mormonism, but other faiths as well. that is interesting giving how religious we are compared to
government can take care of you, a and this is why we are so discombobulated here, because we are moving from one thing to another, and it is uncomfortable shift. so there is no doubt that we are moving into a time when the government is going to do less for people, and it is going to ask more from people, and that is simple math of the budget, and people, and the thing that is going to be pulling america out of this is more self-reliance of individuals, but they have not gotten the message yet, and lot of people haven t anyway that you are on your own and no poll politician is going to tell the them that and they are feed iing them a l in this campaign that some new policy in washington will fix your problem. it is not going to happen. let me pause on this, because this is counter to what the president said yesterday. yesterday he said, and this might be the thing that makes us exceptional relative to the european economic crisis is that america has a political solution to our econo