Word: egalitarians
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...often been with America. As the pioneer vanguard of the young Republic swept westward, Americans were gradually confronted by an embarrassing discrepancy between political dreams and everyday realities. There was on the one hand the agrarian, egalitarian Eden of their early (often mythical) memory, and on the other, the violent have-and-have-not realities of an incipient industrial state. At the end of the 19th century, this conflict-exacerbated by a civil war and a massive infusion of immigrants-had dislocated millions of people, to say nothing of their ideals. Where was America going? Had a continent been laid...
...country (but almost nowhere else) that it may not always be sinful to have a lot of money, but it is vaguely sinful to enjoy it and unforgivably sinful to do so in public." Of course, this feeling is less a matter of morality than envy. In this wonderfully egalitarian country, the have-nots naturally demand: "Why not me?" And in politics, the voters have come to accept rich candidates, if not actually to prefer them...
...slept on church floors and lived on peanut butter sandwiches. During the last 36 hours of the campaign we hardly slept at all. To be sure, there were exceptions. Saturday afternoon, a rather unusual call came through: four beds were offered to anyone from Harvard. We quickly junked any egalitarian tendencies and accepted. We never discovered just why we had been requested. The house, an extremely comfortable place near the Governor's estate, was owned by a Nixon Republican and his wife, a Kennedy supporter. Neither had any connection with Harvard. They, like many others, had been impressed enough...
...needs for exclusivity. As James Baldwin has pointed out, everyone needs his "nigger." We are told by the Choate Club president that secrecy was necessary in order to avoid the anxiety suffered by those who weren't chosen. I suggest rather that secrecy at the Choate Club, in an egalitarian age where restrictive barriers are collapsing and on a campus where fraternal orders are viewed with some disdain, was the means by which Choate members avoided their own anxiety in having to justify their organization to the rest of the world...
...uncomplicated egalitarian where race relations are concerned, Smith nevertheless writes in his farewell column that the "elevation of Stokely Carmichael into a real force in our nation" is an example of an irresponsible journalistic buildup. A few years back, Joe McCarthy was similarly elevated, says Smith, but he at least was a U.S. Senator. Carmichael is "basically a nobody, who, before the press took notice of him, had achieved nothing. He failed to win a following-except from us with our cameras and note pads-in the rural South and in the city ghettos." Thanks to the big play...