Title IX, which opened athletic opportunity to women. That was Mr. Nixon's gift to the world of sport if memory serves. Doubtless all these gold medals for women's soccer and softball would have been much harder to come by had not a generation of American women had the chance to try their hands at these sports courtesy of the US government.

So the idea that Americans are fully "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps" is, if not a myth, at least tainted by reality.

OK, you welfare queens... drop & give me fifty!