http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20080824_The_Point__A_man_of_word...

To the editor:

Mark Bowden's essay this Sunday on Barack Obama pointed out a change in
the American outlook, perhaps even in the American Dream which
Republicans have so distorted over the past decades. When Bowden says,
> If people are listening to his story, and comparing his life story to
> the story he is telling, that may be because millions of Americans
> have been waiting for someone to tell it. For years, it has been a
> story waiting for a teller. The desire for racial equality grows in
> each succeeding generation. It is a welcome and unstoppable trend.
he does not compare this to the American Dream of equal opportunity for
ourselves and our families to succeed. We watch our schools deteriorate,
and we watch our neighbors leave to the outer reaches in search of
educational excellence. We watch as our neighbors' houses are abandoned
because of fraudulent mortgages, while the hucksters who knowingly
schmeichled them open their Swiss bank accounts, to leave the rest of us
to pay the debt for their crimes. We watch our trips to work become more
expensive, while for decades Republicans explained that improved
government mileage standards were an abomination against the free
market. Barack Obama embodies not just the desire for racial equality,
but for a restoration of economic equality.

Ronald Reagan once quipped that there is nothing wrong with a little
greed. The problem with that statement is that greed by its very
definition is "excessive avarice": there is no such thing as "a little
greed." Restoring the progressive income tax to differentiate between
the rich and the middle class will only begin to restore the balance in
assets and income between Americans, to give all of our children an
equal chance to succeed.

Ben Burrows
406 Shoemaker Road
Elkins Park, PA 19027
215-266-2029