The best way a real class system can be truly self-perpetuating is if the myth is established that there is no class system, and those incapable of improving their condition have no one to blame but their own intrinsic inadequacy. This relieves the leadership of the society of any responsibility for leveling the playing field and encourages them to reinforce their own position.

The truth of course, is always somewhere in between. Even in the most oppressive and hidebound system, exceptional people will occasionally rise to the top. And even under the most egalitarian conditions, capable people are sometimes just unlucky.

The United States, in my opinion, has always been one of the easiest nations in the world in which to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps. I'll be the first to admit that because of my own experience. I am convinced I was fortunate enough to have come of age in a time when opportunity was most open to all. We are probably still the best nation in the world to be in by that criterion.

But I am just as convinced that the pendulum is swinging back, partly because of economic conditions which we have no control over, and partly by deliberate policies and actions taken by those solidifying their gains by excluding others. And I am very happy I am not a young man in my twenties starting out today from the same place I started from in my youth. The optimism I had in my twenties was not solely due to my youth and vigor. Times were easier.

As for class warfare, I'm seeing it beginning everywhere, even deliberately incited and provoked; and not just political or economic, but social: Old vs young, educated vs uneducated, public employee vs private employee, blue vs white collar, management vs labor, I could go on.

The myth of a classless society has two results: It convinces those at the bottom that the reason they are there is because they are worthless and intrinsically incapable of helping themselves, and it reinforces those at the top that they are the chosen and the virtuous and that they alone deserve the success they enjoy by the very fact they have demonstrated it. And if they do fail, or if things don't work out for them, they can then feel comforted that only a conspiracy of the envious stands in the way of their success.