John Halpin's latest at The Liberal Patriot looks at the class character of the people's representatives. It's rather disconcerting.
"There’s no greater positive myth in American life than the belief that our national government is “of the people, by the people, for the people” as President Abraham Lincoln famously stated in the Gettysburg Address.
Although this ideal may be theoretically true—the American system of government has lasted longer than any other system in the world, after all, with citizens electing their own representatives in regular and fair elections—a basic examination of the makeup of our current Congress reveals a few confounding facts that complicate our well-intended egalitarian beliefs about who runs the country. Consider this:
Contemporary members of Congress look nothing like the rest of America in terms of their educational attainment and job backgrounds. According to the Congressional Research Service, 94 percent of House members and 100 percent of Senators in the 117th U.S. Congress have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher. For comparison, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2021 only 38 percent of Americans age 25 years or older had obtained a bachelor’s degree or higher. The near uniformity of college education among members of Congress today stands in stark contrast to mid-century trends when three-quarters of Senators and a little more than half of House members had obtained a bachelor’s degree or higher."
Read the rest at The Liberal Patriot!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.