Thomas Carlyle - Past and Present

Written around a time where famine and poverty were prevalent in England, Carlyle wrote to the working class, like an English Socialist-lite he wrote about how the aristocracy was using the best and brightest of England, the working-man, to make money and keep them away from the fruits of labor. In his quote about what the upper-class was saying to the working man, "Touch it not, ye workers, ye master-workers, ye master-idlers; none of you can touch it, no man of you shall be the better for it; this is enchanted fruit!" Here the working man, who works hard and long to make a better life for himself, in actuality has no inspiration or motivational drive, if the aristocracy takes from him all that he has worked for.

He compares the life of the aristocrat as,

"many men eat finer cookery, drink dearer liquors, - with what advantage they can report, and their doctors can: but in the heart of them, if we go out of the dyspecptic stomach, what increase of blessedness is there? Are they better, beautifuler, stronger, braver? Are they even what they call "happier"? Do they look with satisfaction on more things and human faces in this God's-Earth; do more things and human faces look with satisfaction on them? Not so."

This long quote is very realistic to the times, the aristocrat and nobles are said to have noble or holy blood, that is descended from their father's fathers. Carlyle is saying the working class deserve just as much if not more good treatment as this, and he calls upon God's blessing to say so. He sees equality in men, no matter their birth right. He calls upon the rich working man, who can actually do something about these immanent changes.
He uses the fable of Midas, whose touch turned anything into Gold. He compares this to England saying even though we have all these riches, what good are they if everyone who works for them is not the happier? "What a trush in these old fables!" he says our "successful industry is a non-success! what a strange success!" meaning that the industry of England is one of the most powerful in the world, and yet the vast majority of England sees none of this.

I can relate to this reading by the fact that I am a social Liberal. I will not divulge on my economic politics as they do not pertain to this post. But the social aspect of the USA is of major concern to me. Why can Homosexuals not get married? Do they not pay taxes as everyone else does? What right do we have to tell a woman she cannot make major decisions in her life? Why is it fair that the rich in the US can hire rich tax firms to skimp out on what they owe to their country? I ask these questions with one thing in mind, the benefit of the everyday people of the United States. I am not saying one political party is better and going to help us overcome these social inequalities. But something has to change to make the lives of our countrymen equal. I am not a Marxist, as I believe Carlyle is not either. He believes in "heroes" that have power and can make a difference, to rise up from the paradox of a rich class and a poor class being separated by authority and near-slavery. Today we have a huge middle class that seems to run the government and make all the decisions, but they need to look out for their less-than equal peers, and make them equal!