The commentator Fareed Zakaria compared America’s working-class whites to Russians after the Soviet collapse: “They were central to America’s economy, its society, indeed its very identity,” he wrote. “They are not anymore.” Paraphrasing a Princeton sociologist to the effect that white people were just complaining because they had been spoiled, he then contrasted them unfavorably with poor blacks and immigrants, who “do not assume that the system is set up for them.” But why shouldn’t the citizens of a republic assume that the system is set up for them? The Gettysburg Address said it was set
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