Ignorance, then and now

"...Americans are wondrous optimists, looking to the upper class and expecting to join it someday. In 1860, many subsistence farmers aspired to become large slave-owners. So poor white Southerners supported slavery then, just as many low-income people support the extension of George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy now."  --James W. Loewen, from his article "Five myths about why the South seceded" in The Washington Post


Idiots.


And for clarification, both groups (the poor, subsistence farmers, aspiring to be large quantity slave-owners one day and low-income people today, thinking they should support the George W. Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, in case they become wealthy one day, too.)


Link to article:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/07/AR2011010703178.html