>Opportunity is all around us. What is preventing ANYONE in this >country from achieving wealth and security? One's personal choices. >That's what.

As usual, your full of shit, but then, we expected no less. Yes there are people in this country who may fit the box that you stuff them in but it is always the same with you folks, any bad apples define the entire demographic. 

A nation will be judged by the way the way they treat the least among them and so will you.

There is a natural law that limits some people in their abilities and potential. That doesn't mean that they aren't working themselves to death for an unfair and unbalanced wage which doesn't keep up with the cost of a meager existence.  After all, there naturally has to be section of people devoted to performing the grunt work that makes these people of wealth what they are.

Free enterprise has reached a point, in most cases, where the lowest rungs of the ladder are no longer a primary concern. ( as long as there are desperate people to perform those jobs )

When we care more about the accumulation of ungodly amounts of wealth at the cost of the comfort of the people who make it happen then something has gone haywire and the system no longer works.

To say that anyone and everyone has those same opportunities is just plain unrealistic. Sure, many could make these opportunities for themselves and then there others who are trapped.

If everyone who is currently sweating in a factory were to suddenly find that leg up and become independently wealthy, who would work in the factorys ? 

You are conservatively compassionate. One day an unscheduled disaster may find you in a different economic setting.