CAN WHITE AMERICA'S (SO-CALLED) EXCEPTIONALISM BE SAVED?

Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (New York: Crown Forum, 2012) ("And so I am hoping for a civic Great Awakening among the new upper class. It starts with a question that I hope they will take to heart: How much do you value what has made America exceptional, and what are you willing to do to preserve it?" Id. at 305. From the bookjacket: "The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about the life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk." "The evidence in Coming Apart is about white America, Its message is about all of America." Also see Nicholas Confessore, "Tramps Like Them," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/12/2012.).