"...The American myth is of free will in its simple, primary sense. One can choose oneself and will oneself; and this absurdly optimistic assumption so dominates the republic that it has bred all its gross social injustices. Failure to succeed proves a moral, not a genetic, fault. "All men are born equal" becomes "No decent society can help those who fail to stay equal." The myth becomes so pervasive that it even ends up as the credo of those , the underprivileged, who most need to disbelieve it. I have seen it in even the most intelligent liberals there, people like Abe and Mildred, impeccably sympathetic in their attitude to things like Medicare, Black anger, environmental control and all the rest; yet still they hanker after the old and other American dream of freedom to cash in on other people's inequality. From the beginning, Americans came to America to escape two things: political tyranny and fixed odds in the struggle for life, and they have never realized that the two aims are profoundly hostile to each other--that the genetic injustice of life is just as great as the old European economic injustice. Their system dealt with the latter by assuming an equal dispensation of energy, talent, and good luck to all men; and now they are smashed hard on the reef of the far deeper injustice."

From "Daniel Martin"
by John Fowles