The Hypocrisy of John Edwards (Not)
As I read the L.A. Times Sunday Opinion section this morning — which I do pretty much every weekend because apparently I would rather be angry than informed — I was moved by a piece that ran under the headline "Edwards' Life Clashes With Campaign Message" to get immediately up out of my chair and write a rebuttal to the Times. (Article Summary: John Edwards' argument that there are Two Americas is fatally flawed because, as Edwards himself demonstrates, it is possible to move between classes.)
Since the Times presumably receives about a billion letters to the editor every day, I figured I might as well post my short point here, in the likely event that my missive disappears into a computer downtown and is never seen again.
David Gelernter misses the point of John Edwards' argument about Two Americas. The idea is not, as Gelernter suggests, that the country is divided by some impermeable barricade through which no one may move. Rather, the crux of Edwards' argument — which can hardly be denied when one considers the charmed life of George W. Bush — is that a completely different set of rules of the road applies to those who are rich as opposed to those who are poor, and that this is not just, and that all Americans deserve better.
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