Frequently public discourse in the United States is moved by phony controversy. A phony controversy distracts from real controversy, like a man about to be executed who turns down a last cigarette because he's worried about lung disease.

A salient example is the abortion rights controversy, which—no matter whether abortion be available or banned—has no measurable effect on the basic material circumstances of American citizens.

During the epoch that abortion was raised as a controversy, the structure of American society was changed for the worse: its middle class has been reduced; its bourgeoisie no longer dominates and stabilizes it. America has turned into a country whose dominant classes are a privileged ruling class and a growing and inarticulate working class, with a shrinking and uninfluential middle class. American society looks more like that of pre-revolutionary France, or Regency England, than the vibrant economic and political democracy of post-World War II America. This is very bad news: a broad and influential middle class is a reliable guarantor of democracy and prosperity and—let's be frank—hegemony. As Britain's long economic decline throughout the twentieth century shows, a society riven by class struggle is doomed to declining standards of living.

The fall of the middle class from dominance to irrelevance didn't just happen: and it could have been stopped or reversed at any time—if anyone had been paying attention. The Congress passed laws diminishing the influence of their middle-class electors in many aspects of American life; nepotism—a cornerstone of oligarchy—became respectable, and in government, customary; the arts, and cultural institutions have been arrogated, by subsidy, to the control of bureaucracy. All these things happened with very little controversy. Far easier to have an opinion about rights-to-life or rights-to-choose, than to talk about something which makes Americans truly squeamish, America's class system.

The attentions of America's middle-class voters, the reportage and editorials of its news organizations, the efforts of its social activists, the agenda of its civil libertarians, the opinions of its intellectuals, the dockets of its appellate courts, the time and moneys of its political parties, were soaked up by the abortion controversy. To this day the matter has not been settled. In the meantime, America has become a less-stable, less-prosperous, and less-fair place in which to live and work for ordinary women and men.

Of course it's still better than other places, so far; but America has competitors. While America has busied itself with its 'lifestyle', the European Union (EU), for one example, and China, for another, have been busy figuring out how to eat our lunch—and breakfasts and dinners too.

Already Enron has shown the world that America may not be such a safe place to invest its money. While it is fashionable to congratulate ourselves on how many persons wish to emigrate to the United States, that may not be true in the future. What if people look at America and see that the promises of middle-class life have become less achievable than in the EU? or China?