Question 4 Does this quote from Thomas Paine hold true in today's America? "If there is a country in the world, where concord, according to common calculation, would be least expected, it is America. Made up, as it is, of people from different nations, accustomed to different forms and habits of government, speaking different languages, and more different in their modes of worship, it would appear that the union of such a people was impracticable; but by the simple operation of constructing government on the principles of society and the rights of man, every difficulty retires, and all the parts are brought into cordial unison. There, the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged. . . . Their taxes are few, because their government is just; and as there is nothing to render them wretched, there is nothing to engender riots and tumults." Thomas Paine was essentially the speaker of the revolutionary war in America, and in the early stages of the American way, he describes rather accurately the atmosphere of America in 1776. But when this quote is applied to modern day's America, it holds only a little truth. Paine is correct in his assessment of the diversity of the America, but in the way the social sphere in modern times, and the way that the laws are enacted, he is definitely overly optimistic. North and South America spawned as primarily Spanish, English and French colonies that intermingled (generally poorly) with the natives of the lands. Then, Polish, Irish, German and Austrian came. We imported some African slaves and then the southern europeans started to migrate here. The chinese came, the Japanese came, the Mexican people came. In those early years of American existence, we were a young country, with people who had previously never lived in the vicinity of each other, were then next door neighbors. They had few similarities in religion, or language, or ideas for how things were to be run. They had their own sources of media, in their own languages, enjoying the company of their own people, allowing generally for less assimilation and more individualism culturally. It's not that there isn't immigration coming into the United States now, and it's not that those people form their own tight knit communities, but now we are forming to become a more assimilated people. In today's world, we do have people coming from India, from China, from Britain, and from Germany. We have Somalians and Kenyans and people from every nation, all practicing different religions and wanting for the supposed "American Dream." What's different now though, is that we are all assimilating. We have families that instead of having been here for one or two generations, they have been here for eight. Instead of having newspapers that are bespoke to a specific nationalities culture, are all in English. Instead of having our own, single nationality communities, we are more focused on multi-national communities that all enjoy the same TV shows and sports. We aren't as diverse as we were, making our people become a little bit more uniform for better or for worse. For instance, when a hispanic child moves to the U.S., they are immediately put into English classes because spanish is not all that usable in this country. In the times of Thomas Paine, this would have not been the case. When Paine says that "There, the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged. . . . Their taxes are few, because their government is just;" he is also not really correct in today's times. Today in America, we have a larger class divide than almost any other nation in any other time in history and this gap is only expanding. I don't mean to go all impassioned rant style on this, but the rich are favored in the way that they pay less taxes, they have more opportunities to make more money because of their status and social power. Then, in the world of the poor, they are oppressed. It is true that they are much better off than they were in yesteryear, but it's significantly harder to get a job if you are homeless, it's almost impossible to retire if you are poor, and family ties are no longer enough to have a comfortable old age. Then with taxes, during the time Paine wrote this, they had no income tax, and no property tax, and their sales tax was at about 8%. Today obviously this is not the case at all. Relative to other nations in the world, our taxes are pretty low, and they are rightfully high for their purposes, but it's not a laissez faire economy anymore. Then finally, with his idea that our government is just, by the fact that we were have been willing to slow progress economically and socially for the reason to prove that one side is right, is horrendously fickle and diluded. When Thomas Paine said that America is a land of diversity among many nations that bring many traits together, and that our government is proper and simply for the protection of human rights, he may have been partly right in the early ages of America. But in today's America, his statement is simply incorrect