luxury beliefs..................

 White privilege is the luxury belief that took me the longest to understand, because I grew up around a lot of poor white people. Affluent white college graduates seem to be the most enthusiastic about the idea of white privilege, yet they are the least likely to incur any costs for promoting that belief. Rather, they raise their social standing by talking about their privilege. When policies are implemented to combat white privilege, it won’t be Yale graduates who are harmed. Poor white people will bear the brunt.

-Rob Henderson, from here

An idealist..........................

Power worried him: no one ever believed he possessed too much of the stuff.  His sympathies were with the man in the street, to whom he believed government answered.  A friend distilled his politics to two maxims: "Rulers should have little, the people much." And privilege should make way for genius and industry. Railing against "the odious hereditary distinction of families." 

-Stacy Schiff,  The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

I consider myself..........................

 .........................................privileged.   I suspect Greg Mankiw would concur.

Privilege................................

 .....................I grew up in a home like this.

Apparently people are starting to notice that it makes a difference.  For instance, this book review, or this column review.   For a different take, check this blog post. All I know is I do feel privileged.

grace........................

     And now I remind myself that I must heed William Blake's warning not to attempt to cling to a sublime experience, but rather allow it to come and go with grace.  In another of his metaphysical poems, the four-line jewel called "Eternity," he writes:

            He who binds to himself a joy

            Does the winged life destroy;

            But he who kisses the joy as it flies

            Lives in Eternity's sunrise.

    I stand and raise my glass.  "It is a great privilege to be here," I say.  Then, smiling, I add, "In fact, it is a great privilege simply to be." 

-Daniel Klein, Travels with Epicurus

On privilege........................

 Moreover, in politics as well as in philosophy and in religion the intellect of democratic nations is particularly open to simple and general notions.  Complicated systems are repugnant to it, and its favorite conception is that of a great nation composed of citizens all formed upon one pattern and all governed by a single power.

     The very next notion to that of a single and central power which presents itself to the minds of men in the ages of equality is the notion of uniformity of legislation.  As every man sees that he differs but little from those around him, he cannot understand why a rule that is applicable to one man should not be equally applicable to all others.  Hence the slightest privileges are repugnant to his reason; the faintest dissimilarities in the political institutions of the same people offend him, and uniformity of legislation appears to him to be the first condition of good government.

     I find, on the contrary, that this notion of a uniform rule equally binding on all members of the community was almost unknown to the human mind in aristocratic ages; either it was never broached, or it was rejected.

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume II,  Fourth Book, Chapter II

   

I confess to being greatly...................

....................................privileged.

There's privilege...........................

 ........................and then there is privilege.