Along with Garnes, another young leader, he is part of the up-the-middle backbone of the defense.
The 22,000 prisoners-of-war murdered by Stalin's secret police were not just the military leadership; they were also reservists doctors, lawyers, teachers, officials who formed the middle-class backbone of Poland.
Of course communism prevented the country from rebuilding a financially and thus existentially independent middle class, the backbone of any democracy.
All that said, my prediction is that the biggest domestic issue in the next four years will be how we respond to changes in technology, globalization and markets that have, in a very short space of time, made the decent-wage, middle-skilled job — the backbone of the middle class — increasingly obsolete.
The middle class is the backbone of the economy.
Ali is more focused on Iraq's future than its past, and his story is perhaps a small measure of hope for the eventual return of Iraq's educated middle class, once the backbone of a cosmopolitan society.
Today's New York-based Haitian professionals -- doctors, educators, social workers, engineers, civil servants, clergy, etc. -- were once the backbone of the middle and upper-middle class in Haiti.
Unchallenged hypocrisy from the Republicans is laying waste to the middle-class -- the backbone of a thriving democracy.
One recent Obama ad says that when he was governor he raised fees on the backbone of the middle class: nurses, electricians and fishermen.
If there has ever been a social cliché with roots in reality, it would be that a vast middle class was always the backbone of the United States' strength.
We will also heed the lesson of history – that those who fight in battle can form the backbone of our middle class – by implementing a 21st century GI bill to help our veterans live their dreams.
