Geoff Cutler’s column “Do We Know Who We Are Anymore?” (April 10) unapologetically furthers the central tenet of cultural and political individualism, the separation of each person’s interests and identity from those of others. What’s mine is mine. Any acknowledgement of your needs endangers my welfare.

The observances of de Tocqueville Cutler uses about the nature of American democracy are debatable. The historian Howard Zinn said about the same period, “We have here a forecast of the long history of American politics, the mobilization of lower class energy by upper-class politicians.”

Yes, the Colonists were largely working class Americans, unlike the Founding Fathers, who weren’t very different from the English aristocracy they replaced. Their concern was to conjure up legislation that would sound good, mystify, and keep the lower classes in line and keep the rich and powerful where they are today — still in charge.

These days, by focusing their energies on government spending, Republicans seek to obscure the existence of this country’s oligarchic setup that wreaks vast income inequality with corrosive effects. The Saudi Arabian royal family’s income would probably appear more equable compared with the gulf between the rich and poor in America. But Cutler prefers the entitlement tack about how we’re handicapping the poor. And when millionaires and billionaires overreach and get a taxpayer bailout, the right will say or do anything, no matter how dastardly, and with straight faces defy the government to take away their tax breaks.

Bob Katrin

Southern Pines