AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
Where we ever?   Are we still?

American exceptionalism is a term first spoken by Joseph Stalin in the 1920s meaning that America it was different than the other countries -- the term does not denote superiority, just uniqueness. Kent tried to establish in the first hour that America had different conditions that fostered certain things (wish I had copied his slide) -- four points each with three subtopics. Individualism, Egalitarianism, Religion, and Industrialness.   Tocqueville was used to describe the founding father's world. Much made of association, ability to get along and solve problems to everyone's satisfaction -- town meeting and local organizations.

People in class wanted to talk about all the sociological and historic points and of course some wanted to explain how socialism was the solution.

Second hour was a too long video of statistics of social change (all trending negative) and drew the conclusion that (and I wrote this down) "ALL IS LOST. We are well on the way to a wo-tier society." Then closed with the thought that America had reversed itself several times in the past and can do it again -- alcohol use before prohibition, religious revivals, and such.
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The second speaker's numbers agree with my observation -- but I did not speak in class.   Most of the world has settled into a hierarchy and acceptance of station. Serfs of eastern Europe ; peasants of central Europe ; parishioners of southern Europe and now Latin America where the purpose of the church is to keep people satisfied with their lot in life ; caste and even slavery and untouchables of eastern lands. Then came America in the new world which had vast land and rapid growth allowing people to create and reap the benefits of their own work. All benefited and grew wealthy This explains the individualism, association, and industriousness. The frontier closed in 1890 and since then we have been setting up the hierarchy just like the rest of the world. We have become common -- with a memory of former times and freedoms.

Much was made by the class of need for a minimum wage. On this I also have thoughts.
  In the near future when robots start doing the work and taking away all the jobs, then we need a technique to distribute wealth among the people. The socialists will finally be right in their ongoing point that the existing rich will be the ones who will get richer at the (comparative) expense of the rest of the people. The rich will "own" the robots and claim their benefits of AI and automation that could be said to rightly belong to humankind in general. That old argument of capitalism vs socialism. The traditional, democratic argument that man has inalienable rights to the fruit of his labor goes away entirely when man does no work anymore. The class last time [Singlularity] did not have time to discover this point. The classic answer is revolution. But with the robot-owners owning the means of total information and control, any revolution would fail early. Is it imaginative fiction that a robot intelligence infused with liberal and humanities orientation would side with the masses and establish an equitable society? Rather, I think, the robots will take control themselves without need of a human board of directors. Humanity as previously known ends : perhaps evolving into docile cows, or exiled to Australia, or allowed to exist in the trash dumps surrounding AI cities, or be encouraged, either benignly or actively, to die out.
    http://www.manorweb.com/creative/2014/singhl.html
See new headlines after class.