Posted on 07/15/2012 10:11:01 AM PDT by bunkerhill7
Of the 300+ books on google books using the term, "middle class America", only one earliest is 1971, a few in 1980`s and 95% in 1990`s and 2000`s til now.
I never heard the term "middle class Americans" in my youth, not even in college sociology classes in 1960`s. It appears to be a made-up-term borrowed from English social class structure as defined by Webster.
These communist sociologists try to force an Englsh social model upon America which is impossible- to make a square peg fit a round hole in an fallacious attempt to define a fluid social dynamic of American society as a static factor, which it is not.
These revisionist precaricators attempt to falsely tell us that other 18th century and 19th century authors wrote about the "American Middle class" yet it appears that I couldn`t find one instance of a direct quote using that term in those eras.
They are repeating this lie so often for so many years and teaching it in schools and colleges that everyone actually believes there is a static frozen American middle class , which there just ain`t. You can browse these volumes and see the communist propaganda there disguised as "class" this and "class" that which is a lie.
viz: "Karen Halttunen draws a vivid picture of the social and cultural development of the UPWARDLY MOBILE MIDDLE CLASS" [my caps],...1986, ;Confidence men and painted women:...'
Sorry Obummer but "middle class" is a term origninated in England to denote people bewtween the nobility and the working people.
Webster`s Dictionary definition of "middle class". p.532:
"In England, people who have an intermediate position between the nobility and or leisured class and the working class. It includes professional men, bankers, merchants, and small landed proprietors."
Googlebooks search 300+ examples after 1980`s etc except for one in 1971:
"The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the ...
books.google.com Stuart M. Blumin - 1989 - 434 pages - Preview
====
"This book traces the emergence of the recongnizable 'middle class' from the 1760-1900."
Middle-class Blacks in a white society: Prince Hall Freemasonry in ...
================
"Children and arson: America's middle class nightmare"
books.google.comWayne S. Wooden, Martha Lou Berkey - 1984 - 267 pages - Snippet view =======================================================
"The cult of youth in middle-class America: Volume 69"
books.google.comRichard L. Rapson - 1971 - 118 pages - Snippet view
=====================
"Confidence men and painted women: a study of middle-class culture ...'
books.google.comKaren Halttunen - 1986 - 262 pages - Preview
"Karen Halttunen draws a vivid picture of the social and cultural development of the upwardly mobile middle class, basing her study on a survey of the conduct manuals and fashion magazines of mid-nineteenth-century America."
============================
"The aristocracy of labor: the position of skilled craftsmen in the ..."
books.google.comGavin Mackenzie - 1973 - 208 pages - Preview
"Dr Mackenzie's study is designed to test the common assertion in the press and in recent American academic sociology that the line separating the working class from the middle class is becoming increasingly blurred, leading to the ..."
====================== >p? "Work in America: A - M".: Volume 1 - Page 628
books.google.com2003 - 369 pages - Google eBook - Preview
'In Babbitt (1922),Lewis examines the unimaginative aspirations of the American middle class, the role work plays in defining white-collar worth,and the unending quest for profit and status'
=========================
books.google.comWilliam A. Muraskin - 1975 - 318 pages - Full view
source: https://www.google.com/search?q=middle+class+America&btnG=Search+Books&tbm=bks&tbo=1#q=middle+class+America&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=1&tbm=bks&ei=o-kCUPC8L7Ky0QGN2PzUBw&start=40&sa=N&fp=1&biw=1366&bih=540&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&cad=b&sei=WeQCUMboBcbf0QHb9uTBBw
Google is a made up term.
Every term or phrase is “made up”.
Funny, I grew up hearing the term middle-class Americans, that the middle-class is the backbone of America, the working middle-class, the lower middle-class and the upper middle-class. It wasn’t until later that I began to understand the concept of political elites and serfs, or the filthy rich. It isn’t a bad term, or a bad reality. It implies upward mobility, and reward for hard work. It has defined America, a place where anyone can start with nothing, and work their way into something. It is the middle area that we move through, live in, hate, enjoy, join and leave behind, and without it, we get stuck looking up. It’s demise is a tragedy.
Note to Google: Marx called the middle class the “petit bourgeois” and rails against it for the fact that it represents people who should be siding with the “workers”, but instead believe that they should side with the capitalists. Attempting to rewrite history so that “middle class” never existed doesn’t even follow the writings of their god, Karl Marx.
Er... OK... so what does this all mean?
You’re going to get slammed with evidence to contrary, so I’m not even going to bother. I grew up hearing the term all the time. However, the use that I heard growing up was more synonymous with working class than the definition we use now.
It means that shares in Stupid.com have blasted through their 30- and 150-day resistance levels.
The expected correction is still off in the future somewhere.
“Middle Class America” is union-speak for themselves.
On above ‘advance google search’ link - go to news search and put in date parameters...1800’s to 1960, etc.
Sorry but “Middle Class” is an English term for society in England, not American society.
It was usurped by the sociologists to try to fit awkwardly’ on American society. I was raised with Webster`s dictionary in school, and the term “middle class” is a term originated evidently in England, not the USA. Ergo, it is false to ascribe it to American society, because there is no titled nobility aristocracy allowed in the USA by the U.S. Constitution. You may have heard the term “middle class” when growing up, but the term has nothing to do with American society. Next thing you know these sociologists pinkos will borrtow the term “caste” from India and apply also to American society... Gimme a break. Who gives the right to these idiots to rdefine Webster. Absurd morons!
If you want to argue the point, argue with Webster- I am just sourcing the FACTS, Jack.
Sorry but “Middle Class” is an English term for society in England, not American society.
It was usurped by the sociologists to try to fit awkwardly’ on American society. I was raised with Webster`s dictionary in school, and the term “middle class” is a term originated evidently in England, not the USA. Ergo, it is false to ascribe it to American society, because there is no titled nobility aristocracy allowed in the USA by the U.S. Constitution. You may have heard the term “middle class” when growing up, but the term has nothing to do with American society. Next thing you know these sociologists pinkos will borrtow the term “caste” from India and apply also to American society... Gimme a break. Who gives the right to these idiots to rdefine Webster. Absurd morons!
If you want to argue the point, argue with Webster- I am just sourcing the FACTS, Jack.
Therein lies the story, and it's a subtle but critical one.
I suspect I "grew up" a lot earlier, and although "middle class" was in common useage the entire time, Middle Class Americans" was not.
Middle class and "Middle Class Americans" are not synonymous.
Those who control language control everything.
Just "Middle Class" is a phrase that is totally subject to as many definitions, by inference, as there are people. It is inexact."
"Middle Class Americans" is a political phrase that is critically necessary for the class war; sort of like "The New Man." Among other things, it drills into the subconscious that everyone who is in America is an American.
Including Illegal Aliens.
Don't think so?
Listen carefully to Hussein and the Soros surrogates, and their flying monkeys.
Even Fox has succumbed.
I wince, every time I hear the inane phrase, "Americano, como tu."
In your dreams, Xotlil!
Therein lies the story, and it's a subtle but critical one.
I suspect I "grew up" a lot earlier, and although "middle class" was in common useage the entire time, Middle Class Americans" was not.
Middle class and "Middle Class Americans" are not synonymous.
Those who control language control everything.
Just "Middle Class" is a phrase that is totally subject to as many definitions, by inference, as there are people. It is inexact."
"Middle Class Americans" is a political phrase that is critically necessary for the class war; sort of like "The New Man." Among other things, it drills into the subconscious that everyone who is in America is an American.
Including Illegal Aliens.
Don't think so?
Listen carefully to Hussein and the Soros surrogates, and their flying monkeys.
Even Fox has succumbed.
I wince, every time I hear the inane phrase, "Americano, como tu."
In your dreams, Xotlil!
They had this perverse tendency to bring their language with them, and the Scots, Irish, Welsh, Cornish and Manx did the same doggone thing.
Now America was vast, empty, wild and wonderful so for a long time the English class system was worn down by it all and quite frankly didn't manage to survive. But some of their concepts ~ dating back to ancient times ~ continued.
You rarely hear the term "men of property' in American history simply because "Owning PRoperty' meant an entirely different thing here where folks had slaves!
There are some other sociological terms the English had developed to refer to their condition that also disappeared.
The Middle Classes were always the non titled men of property who owned stores or farms, or ships, or small factories. A butcher would be a member of the Middle Classes. A tenant farmer wouldn't unless he owned his own team, plough boards, harness ~ and so on.
Merry Old England didn't have as frozen a social structure as the nobility imagined ~ still doesn't ~
I’m not sure when I grew up had much to do with it. That was in the 50s and 60s, and the term came to me from conservative grandparents and a Goldwater Republican mother. One thing though, we didn’t have the illegal immigration problem we have now, and pride in America wasn’t looked upon as being vulgar. Middle class was regarded as a unique American development, a strength and creation of Capitalism and liberal Democracy. Poverty was something to get out of, and economic success was something to strive for. Between the two there was the vast middle class, land of three bedroom, two bath brick homes and jobs that paid the bills. On occasion there was a new car in the driveway, or a nice new used one. ...Those days are gone for a great many people. Somewhere all that turned into massive debt and more debt, and debt based wealth between the comfortably rich and the welfare poor. ...I stepped out of the game by paying as I went, sacrificing when I had to, and avoiding all debt. My wealth is my own, what little of it there is, and I don’t care what class I belong to.
Sorry but it appears etymological errors here. “Middle class” is a term of English society, not American, in origin. Are you telling me Webster`s dictionary is wrong? Who do you think one is - Webster?? Is one a revisionist etymologist? 1887 Webster`s dictionary defines “middle class” as an English social stratification separating the lords and nobility from the working class.
There was no “American middle class” existing in from 1787 to 1887 according to Webster`s dictionary because there is not and was not any nobility allowed in the U.S.
So where did the pseudo-term “American middle class” originate?
The so-called term “American middle class “ is an attempt by govt and leftist sociologists to define “classes’ of people by income stratification, whereas the true definition of the term “middle class” is based upon BIRTH [English society] and into what class the people were BORN, i.e,., nobility, bankers, merchants ‘[English middle class] or working people.
If this were true, then Obummer would by rules if grammar, logic and semantics, also have to define the “high classes [upper class]” and the “[low] lower classes”. You can`t have the goose without the gander. Obummer and pinko sociologists want to have “American middle class” sans “American high class” or “American upper class” and
“American lower class”- They want to have their cake and eat it too. You just cannot have middle class defined without upper and lower classes defined also.
Some of us have been down on our luck at some point in our lives, and we all know people who are down on their luck or poor but never in my life would I call them “lower class”.
Yet Obummer and leftist sociologoists open the door to this income class labeling and have to define the “American high class” and “the American lower class” since they insist on defining the middle class by wanting to have their cake and eat it too. You just can`t have a “middle class” without a “high class” and a
“lower class” or you are talking nonsense and are making double talk propaganda.
I dare Obummer to call his food stamp and welfare recipient followers and the unemployed as “lower class”. HAHA.
But England did have a high, middle and lower class in 1887 as defined by Webster.
“middle class”=
“In England, people who have an intermediate position between the nobility and or leisured class and the working class. It includes professional men, bankers,
merchants, and small landed proprietors.”
Webster`s Dictionary, p.532.
Just look at the problems the royal family has in England with members of their family marrying “commoners”
- HAHA
I can back up my hypotheses any day using the undisputed authority of Webster on the true meanings of words and terms and their ORIGINS to show the usurped origins of “American middle class” of leftist sociologists and their Obummer govt lackies any day. Webster is a better authority than any sociologist on meanings of words and terms, as I have stated previously. Go argue with Webster. I am only quoting the written authorized source my parents, grandparents and myself learned and used in school, not some fanciful unicorn term made up to fit a non-nobilty based country..
I never heard the term “American middle class” in everyday language spoken here or in any university I attended, never until the 90`s when I started hearing on TV “middle class” from Democrats. I said to myself, “What the hell is the American middle class?”.
Very interesting! Thx for the post.
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