2026-07-27 13:29 UTC
"...This was to become a critically important rhetorical device for
the rule of the few, who would speak to the many of “our” liberty, “our”
property, “our” country....
... The Pennsylvania Journal wrote in 1756: “The people of this province are generally of the middling sort, and at present pretty much upon a level. They are chiefly industrious farmers, artificers or men in trade; they enjoy and are fond of freedom, and the meanest among them thinks he has a right to civility from the greatest.” Indeed, there was a substantial middle class fitting that description. To call them “the people” was to omit black slaves, white servants, displaced Indians. And the term “middle class” concealed a fact long true about this country, that, as Richard Hofstadter said: “It was... a middle-class society governed for the most part by its upper classes...”
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@bss@social.coop 2026-07-27 13:31
"... Those upper classes, to rule, needed to make concessions to the middle class, without damage to their own wealth or power, at the expense of slaves, Indians, and poor whites. This bought loyalty. And to bind that loyalty with something more powerful even than material advantage, the ruling group found, in the 1760s and 1770s, a wonderfully useful device. That device was the language of liberty and equality, which could unite just enough whites to fight a Revolution against England, without ending either slavery or inequality." #US #Politics #Democrat #Capitalism #WhiteSupremacy #Empire