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Will And Ariel Durant: The Balance Between Popular Culture And Equality

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Will and Ariel once wrote “Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.” This quote does a very good job of explaining the yearning for a balance between popular culture and equality America has been yearning for since its inception. Americans generally have always felt that equality is a goal worth striving as all Americans are in the end American regardless of background, but at the same time, we have always been chasing an impossible target in obtaining the most material objects that our popular culture pushes on the public. When it comes down to it, popular culture and equality have been opposed since the constitution. When the constitution was written it is quite obvious equality for white men at the time was a focus just examining the verbiage that is used. Phrases such as “all men are endowed by their …show more content…

Sadly that vision of equality that our founding fathers transcribed in the constitution got lost along the way to the mass marketed popular culture norms, where people are obsessed with wealth and material objects. Sadly it pains me to say, I have to agree with Will and Ariel Durant. Full equality will not ever be obtained in America because of the very document that founded our country, the constitution. For equality for all the be a viable option we would have to take some citizens constitutional rights, for example redistributing the top 1%’s wealth back to the bottom 99%, would in fact, be violating the owner’s rights to wealth and prosperity. You can’t have equality without lacking freedom while on the same note you can’t have freedom without losing some equality due to the fact that they are two diametrically opposed

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