What is a voter to do? Well that depends. Mostly it doesn’t really matter since many voters are armed mostly with prejudice, bias, hate, anger and/or a sense of “moral indignation.” Now that’s scary.
Recently a friend sent me an article in which a probably well intended, quite partisan but terribly misguided blogger railed against the majority party not his choice.
By the way, I’m listening to NPR as I write this. There’s a story about the Tea Party having its sights on the next elected representative they are going to take down. Oh wow. Really?
Getting back to the article my friend sent me, what these guys (Tea Partiers) don’t get is that once in power the Tea Partier who topples the reviled “insider” will become the next “insider.” That’s a promise. It is a fact that “power corrupts.” Also people don’t pay attention. That’s part and parcel for the egregious state of our economy and I don’t mean right now---I mean the way it is and has been.
Moreover, it’s not the “elected representatives” the Tea Partiers should be stalking. Elected representatives are just lapdogs of the oligarchs---regardless the party of the elected representative. Tea Partiers and other truly motivated citizens of the republic should be taking on the oligarchs who own those in office now and will own those the Tea Partiers put in office in the future. Those in “elected” office transform majority public opinion into legislated public policy. Though that sounds transformational it just means rule by majority or tyranny by majority.
What’s the problem with that? The majority is almost always swayed by prejudice, bias and what seems logical. The problem is that things only seem “logical” when viewed through a skewed view of reality that often ignores laws put in place to protect us from ourselves.
One example is the recent events in California dealing with gay marriage. Our secular laws state clearly that we are all equal under the law. Yet, for as long as there has been a republic that fact has never been true. African-Americans have been slaves. Women had no rights including the right to vote until midway through the 20th Century---to have their own credit and control over their own bodies until late in the 20th Century.
When California law finally recognized that gays had a Constitutional right to marry, the oligarchic forces of organized religion (one third of the wholly trinity) brought a referendum that allowed the folk to vote on the issue. The popular opinion of the majority reversed that right. In other words the majority voted to make a special class of people (out of gays). The majority of voters of the State of California prompted by religious fervor and enabled by the mother’s milk of the political process, i.e. money through popular vote said, that gays were not protected by the Constitution. Besides turning the Constitution on its head, this was clearly a case of the founders worst nightmare, tyranny by majority.
Democracy in its pure form is not what we have been led to believe it is. Democracy is not what our founders put in place. Left to its own devices democracy is tyranny that as John Adams stated, “while it lasts is more bloody than either [aristocracy or monarchy]. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
If ours is truly a secular state and a nation of laws the judicial branch of our government will set to right what the “will of the people” would establish as public policy and law.
Do not lose sight of the fact that by majority rule, African-Americans were allowed to be held in slavery on paper for the first century of our existence as a republic and by practice until after WWII.
Public policy is turned into laws by our “elected representatives.” Oligachs owning members of either house of congress is nothing new.
Clinton's 'plantation' remark draws fire
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Hillary Clinton drew criticism Tuesday for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech in which she told a mostly black audience at a Harlem church that Republican leaders have run the House "like a plantation" and the Bush administration will go down as "one of the worst" in U.S. history.
http://articles.cnn.com/2006-01-17/politics/clinton.plantation_1_house-democrats-gop-house-house-speaker-dennis-hastert?_s=PM:POLITICS
And consider that in the mid-1800’s “Senators, said William Allen White, represented not only states and regions but “principalities, powers and business.”
One senator, for instance, represented the Union Pacific Railway System, another the New York Central, still another the insurance interests, …Coal and iron owned a coterie…, cotton had half a dozen Senators. And so it went… It was a plutochratic feudalism eminently respectable. The collar of any great financial interest was worn in pride.” John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, Harper and Brothers, 1956.
Nothing has changed. There’s just more money. For example, during the recent battle to change not healthcare (it’s fine) but healthcare insurance (a trillion dollar industry) Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Representative John Boehner (R-OH) and others read straight from the talking papers prepared for them by the insurance industry. Did I mention lapdogs?
(Money-Driven Medicine) http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08282009/profile.html),
Profits before patients (Healthcare insurance reform)http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-18764-San-Antonio-Public-Policy-Examiner~y2009m9d2-Profits-before-patients-Healthcare-insurance-reform
Benjamin Franklin was aware even in the nascent days of the republic that sinister monied forces were already at work seeking to control the new republic. No doubt he had it in mind when he remarked that the Constitutional Convention had given the citizens “a republic” but only if those citizens could “keep it.” I profer that the republic died with Adams and Jefferson in 1826. Whether citizens of this nation choose to reclaim it is another matter. I do not put any faith in that. Why? Read any of my blog and disabuse yourself.
Hasta Siempre,
More:
The Brothers Koch: Rich, Political And Playing To Win
Chances are you've never heard of Charles and David Koch. The brothers own Koch Industries, a Kansas-based conglomerate that operates oil refineries in several states and is the company behind brands including Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Lycra fibers and Stainmaster carpet. Forbes ranks Koch Industries as the second-largest privately held company in the U.S. — and the Koch brothers themselves? They're worth billions.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129425186
Covert Operations
The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
and your point?
Senate Republicans say they'll block tax increase
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100913/ap_on_bi_ge/us_tax_cuts
what ayn rand and ann coulter and those of their ilk just happened to miss or just plain don’t get…..
The Importance of the 1970s
At a high level, the lesson of Winner-Take-All Politics is similar to that of 13 Bankers: when looking at economic phenomena, be they the financial crisis or the vast increase in inequality of the past thirty years, it’s politics that matters, not just abstract economic forces. One of the singular victories of the rich has been convincing the rest of us that their disproportionate success has been due to abstract economic forces beyond anyone’s control (technology, globalization, etc.), not old-fashioned power politics. Hopefully the financial crisis and the recession that has ended only on paper (if that) will provide the opportunity to teach people that there is no such thing as abstract economic forces; instead, there are different groups using the political system to fight for larger shares of society’s wealth. And one group has been winning for over thirty years.
http://baselinescenario.com/2010/09/13/the-importance-of-the-1970s/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BaselineScenario+%28The+Baseline+Scenario%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail
Library of Congress/Religion
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html
Women's suffrage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage
John Adams Quotes
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/democracy-while_it_lasts_is_more_bloody_than/212521.html
"Campaign Finance Reform Is on Its Last Legs"
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/09/campaign-finance-reform-its-last-legs
Price: We'll defund health reform
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42015.html
Bill Moyers on Plutonomy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSoglDcRbAg
Profiles in Courage
http://www.amazon.com/Profiles-Courage-Perennial-Classics-Fitzgerald/dp/0060955449
13 Bankers
http://www.amazon.com/13-Bankers-Takeover-Financial-Meltdown/dp/0307379051
Winner take all Politics
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=winner+take+all+politics
Slavery by Another Name
http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385506252
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