Commentary: When did Americans start bowing and scraping to VIPs?
by Virginia Heffernan, Los Angeles Times
Jun 05, 2018
3 minutes
For a long time, it was an article of faith that Americans wouldn't tolerate a system of preferential treatment among white men. Family name, title, class status, role in the clergy, property holdings - the theory was that no one deserved a bow and a scrape. You made your way on merit and fair-dealing.
Walt Whitman became a pop star for reminding his countrymen of the duty never to truckle: "Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men."
Of course, this American model of egalitarianism
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