When there is no American Dream, when there is no middle class, there cannot be real democracy. That's why when elections are brought to nations that are in crisis or that don't have a broad, stable, well-educated middle class--such as Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and the Palestinian territories--the result is aristocrats, "strongmen," or theocrats exploiting those elections as a way of gaining decidedly undemocratic power.
America's Founders understood the relationship between the middle class--what Thomas Jefferson called the yeomanry--and democracy. Jefferson's greatest fear for the young American nation was not a new king but a new economic aristocracy. He worried that if a small group of citizens became too wealthy--if America became polarized between the very rich and the very poor--democracy would vanish.
Our democracy depends upon our ability to play referee to the game of business and to protect labor and the public good. It is both our right and our responsibility, Jefferson insisted, to control "overgrown wealth" from becoming "dangerous to the state"--which is, so long as we are a democratic republic, We the People.
When wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few and the middle class shrinks to the point where it's no longer a politically potent force, democracy becomes a feudal aristocracy--the rule of the elite. As Franklin D. Roosevelt pointed out in 1936, the rule of the many requires that We the People have a degree of economic as well as political freedom. When We the People are given the opportunity to educate ourselves, earn a living wage, own our own homes, and feel confident that we have good child care, health care, and care in our old age--in short, when America has a thriving middle class--America also has a thriving democracy.
Without this strong and vibrant middle class, democracy cannot exist; instead, it becomes a caricature of itself. There are leaders and elections and all the forms, but they're only for show; the game is now rigged.
. L. Conradt and T. J. Roper, "Group Decision-making in Animals," Nature 421 (January 9, 2003): 155 58.
. James Randerson, "Democracy Beats Despotism in the Animal World," New Scientist, January 8, 2003
Rob Kall's Review of Thom Hartmann's book, Screwed
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