Are All Choices a Choice?
Dear Diane,
There has always been a special American admiration for wealth as a sign of God's favor. Status from wealth was celebrated as more democratic compared with status from lineage. It's part of our exceptionalism. It's at a high mark right now, best expressed by Newt Gingrich's comment to the Occupiers to "take a bath and get a job." I think of it as I read your accounts of how some of our fellow Americans have taken to the slogans about the opportunities lurking in every human disaster—to other people (e.g. New Orleans).
Lots of old slogans reappear in new guise, like the pre-French Revolution one about the freedom of both the rich and the poor to sleep under a bridge. (I don't actually think that freedom still exists!)
One of my readers suggests that in opposing charters and vouchers you and I are taking choice away from the poor. He also chides us for having "the nerve," as old, white ladies (actually, Diane, you aren't old!), to give the
