When a country does not establish the means by which people who can't afford it through their family fortunes can acquire the tools they need in order (and again I quote from your quote) "to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable", then the people without the tools will be placed in the circumstances which their families can afford.

The geniuses, the saints and the criminals among us will break that mold. They are the exceptions because they are exceptional. If one points to an exception as proof that an ordinary person, even one with talent, can rise above his family's station without support, that is a lie.

If by "share the wealth", you mean collect it all from everyone and cut everyone the same check, then I agree it should not be done. The "equality" spoken of in the Declaration of Independence is equality of dignity and equality of opportunity, the same as is expressed less obliquely in the item that you quoted, not the literal playground equality of divvying up a box of cookies so everyone gets the same number.

When I think of what is commonly called "sharing the wealth", I think of investment in public infrastructure, adequate housing, health care, community and cultural organizations accessible to all, and education in all its particulars, also accissible to all. We're talking about a considerable public spending here, and I believe it should be collected from everybody according to a formula rather than depending on some sense of noblesse oblige from the people. Some are not noble, and some feel obligation only to those who live on their block or who share a certain number of genetic markers as they. Yet everyone benefits from public investments, either directly or indirectly.

I also believe that those with more should be willing to pay more because they benefit more from the stable society that results, and they would stand to lose more if it collapsed. Or if the bridge upon which they were driving were to collapse. Or if the hospital's ability to serve their family were to collapse in the midst of a preventable public health crisis.

Because of where I work and what I do, I see a broad range of people. Our community contains factory workers, agricultural workers, professionals, entrepreneurs, academics, and service economy workers ranging from restaurant employees to manicurists to grocery clerks and stockers. Most of us speak English, though many not as a first language, some because they are migrant farm workers and some because they are instructors at the college or researchers at the medical center. Some of us have come here from nearby cities, or more distant cities, looking for a safer place to raise children. We have every income level and every education level represented in this little town. I see children from all of these levels because I work in an institution that is open to everyone.

If we don't invest in the areas I mentioned, families of people like me, and people better off than me, will have opportunity because we already have a decent place to live and clean water to drink, the option (not always taken) of good diet and exercise, the opportunity to go to the doctor to treat minor ailments before they become major problems, and an education that we can pass on to our children because we know what it is and where to get it. These are "the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position" of which the writer speaks, not a reference to life in the palace or the mansion. Sure, some things can get in the way: addiction, family violence, a true physical catastrophe. But on the whole, we are lucky enough to have had the behaviors that foster health and intelligence modeled for us, so we can do the same for our children.

If a child comes into this world into an impoverished family, even one that means well, he or she may still have a "stature to which they are innately capable", but by the time that child is 5, he or she will already not have had a host of experiences that children with a more fortuitous circumstance of birth or position will have had. They start out behind and, unless they are exceptional, there they will stay without the tools they need to advance. Sometimes the basic necessities are even lacking, things so important that the very idea of participation in society is secondary to becoming physically safe: warm, fed, sheltered. This is in no sense "equal opportunity".

If we haven't the will to provide equal opportunity -- which sometimes means enhancing opportunity for those whose abilities have already been crippled by conditioning -- then the American Dream has already died.