Chapter II: La Guardia, Weinberg and Others: Drawing the Caste Line.

This section discusses the issue of caste in the U.S. It was the despotic and caste-creating policies of Czarist Russia which eventually led to the hypocritical aspects of the racialism and nativism that have plagued American leadership in the twentieth century. For the careers of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia symbolized an age which divided its most talented leaders into first and second-class aristocrats. Roosevelt and La Guardia had parallel careers which were strikingly different because of their ethnic backgrounds. Moreover, the aristocratic process had degenerated into a standard in the generation of La Guardia. The social situation at the levels of American leadership was calculated to manufacture a large number of marginal men of great ability and affluence. And since the end of the Second World War, Anglo-Saxon stock have risen to positions of power and influence and the number of second-class aristocrats has increased. While idiosyncratic anti-Semitism had been characteristic of the code of gentlemen, it was only in the 1880's that upper-class anti-Semitism became rigid and institutionalized.