"government is nothing more...

[handmade34]

than our best attempt to do certain things together that we can't do alone"

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/26/opinion/liu-government-faith/

https://www.facebook.com/CitizenUniversity

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/09/opinion/liu-income-inequality/

An aristocracy is emerging in America, a class of insiders that corrodes the promise of equal citizenship...

...You'll find tribal insularity, short-term thinking, personal irresponsibility, cynicism about playing by the rules, an aversion to socially productive labor, a habit of shameless materialism, an inability to defer gratification and a lack of concern for what "message" all this sends to the youth raised in such an environment.... ....In short, you'll find the very things typically imputed to the culture of poverty.

But rich people who exhibit such values have something the poor don't: Money. Money buys exemption from bad choices. Money confers power -- in particular, over the poor. It confers the power to frame public narrative and policymaking and to determine whose behavior -- whose culture -- is (and isn't) called pathological.

http://www.truepat.org/

The True Patriot challenges every American's definition of patriotism and reminds us of the core values that formed this nation: freedom of expression and worship, responsible stewardship, human equality, shared sacrifice and service, and country above self. But many who live by these principles wouldn't think to identify themselves as patriots. The idea of patriotism has been co-opted by conservatives as a chest-thumping means to justify selfishness and aggression and to condemn the very diversity and discourse that make America exceptional. As the right has redefined patriotism, so the progressive left has shied from it. A pamphlet in the style of Thomas Paine, The True Patriot reframes the concept of patriotism and returns politics to what it once was: a civic virtue and responsibility that fueled America's founders.

[me b zola]

1. Very good read, thanks for posting

There is indeed a culture in America that is pathological and now threatens our social fabric. It's not the culture of poverty, though. It's the culture of wealth.