"I know of no
country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the
affections of men and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory
of the permanent equality of property."
Early Americans believed in the
American Dream of everyone having the opportunity to earn and build wealth.
In
our day, the emphasis is sometimes more on the right to get wealth and the
chance to win it on reality TV than on the effort to earn it.
Interestingly, this change has coincided with another shift.
Tocqueville marveled that the United States was run by "...two governments,
completely separate and almost independent..." of each other, the one the states
and the other the federal government.
He also expressed surprise that state
governments came first and the federal last, and that the states exerted a lot
more power than the federal government. He noted that the state government was
the rule in America, the federal government the limited exception.
In fact, he recorded, the townships were the most important
governments, counties next, then states. The federal government came after all
of these in the minds of the people and the exercise of government power.
So is there a correlation between the relative decline of state
power, the rise of federal dominance and the lessening of widespread American
entrepreneurial initiative and ambition to earn wealth?
Social Leader Daily by Oliver DeMille
