sorry rdf, I was not attempting to derail your main point -- w/which I agree, obviously -- but fascinated by the fact that the myth to which the conservatives cling is itself a myth, i.e. that Horatio Alger, mythwright, did not even say what they say he said.  this is actually pretty typical -- much of the praxis and dogma of the "Christian" established church has precious little to do with the text of the NT, let alone any remote, irrecoverable historical Jesus;  Marx was not a Marxist;  Darwin never uttered the simplistic tropes repeated by crypto-Darwinists;  Adam Smith was in fact skeptical and mistrustful of sharp practises on the part of business owners, and so on.

this is all a sideshow -- of sorts -- to the main drama of dispossession, Enclosure and immiseration aka the Story of Capitalism, whose endgame is playing out in our time.  and yet, if we understood a little better the tenacity of these myths, or our preference (as individuals and a culture) for an invented history or dogma over the complicated texture of fact, we might get a better handle on the possibilities for social change?  (I am not becoming a Straussian, btw -- I don't to say that we should learn to manipulate this human frailty, but somehow compensate for it...)


The difference between theory and practise in practise ...