There
was a time when being rich in America meant having much land or owning a
mercantile business in a city ‑ accumulating wealth and leaving it to one's
offspring so they could enjoy a good life if they continued to work at the
business or maintain the farm. Now being
wealthy means accumulating vast fortunes of
money by investing and using money to make more money ‑ producing nothing of intrinsic value
and then leaving vast fortunes to your children who proceed often to simply
spend it and do little productive, perhaps continue to invest and financially
back others hard at work.
There
was a time when the most respected Americans were those who worked as teachers,
public servants like the policeman, the firefighter, the librarian ‑ the
proverbial people in your neighborhood.
They performed services for the many who worked at producing goods or growing
things. They educated our children and
protected us from criminals and catastrophes.
That
America now exists only in the history books; it is "gone with the
wind" as much as the mythical old south is. And, today America is one in
which two classes struggle, not the age old haves and have-nots, but, the me‑first
vs. the society first. Those who feel that
they belong to the village and those who see the village as a place to reside
in while making one's fortune.
This
year in America is a Presidential election year. These quadrennial exercises in choosing the
national leader often reflect where America is. In the 1820's Jackson stood for
the "man on the make" the young farmers and the mechanics and
craftsmen of the cities vs. those who represented old money (Southern planters
and northern bankers). The Republican party was founded in the mid-1850's
not only on the platform of no extension
of slavery but also the expansion of the economy into the west, cheap sale of government land and the federal
government supporting a transcontinental railroad. The 1932 election was a
contest between those conservatives who believe that doing nothing would solve
the nation's economic problems and liberals who believed they could reform
capitalism in ways that would preserve a free economy in America at the same time
as protecting the livelihood and the quality of life of all our citizens. FDR,
the liberal Democrat, saved the New Deal while most of the western world fell
under the rule of dictators.
This
year the new Republican party ‑ the tea party radical right wing Republican
party‑ advocates a combination of the better to do nothing philosophy and the
help the rich and let what may trickle down.
Republicans offer American not a mouthpiece of the super rich classes
but an actual robber baron himself in Mitt Romney. I guess the superrich believe that rather
than just controlling the President it’s time they had one of their own in the
office. And the Democrats offer for re‑election
Barack Obama, a centrist Democrat, who accepts the basic tenets of capitalism
but also adheres to the injunction of Abraham Lincoln (also of Illinois) that
the function of government is to do the things that people can’t do for
themselves.
It
appeared in the 195o’s and 1960's that both parties had accepted the basic role
of the federal government to protect the economic and civil rights of all our
citizens. Even the Reagan revolution now
appears as a modest effort to curtail some of the more liberal aspects of the
post-New Deal years. But now we begin a
new era - Republicans would put in the White House the fox to guard the
chickens of America. At the turn of the
20th century when America faced a serious economic crisis President Theodore
Roosevelt speaking softly from his bully pulpit faced down J. P. Morgan. The President if the one elected official who
has the moral authority to speak for the entire nation and now the radical
right wing tea party Republicans would put a J. P. Morgan in the White House to
face down all the Theodore Roosevelts. A
President of the 1% will misgovern and mislead the 99% unlike FDR who was
called a traitor to his 1% because he proposed programs to benefit the 99%.
14
July 2012
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