Contemporary Reflections:
Machiavelli believed that good governments change into their bad forms and that externally caused regime changes require extreme brutality. In the United States we have changed, unnoticed, from a republic into an aristocracy. In our attempted economic conquest of Latin American we have encouraged the ruthless behaviors described by Machiavelli in The Prince.
Following the Second World War, the United States has witnessed both peaceful transformations within our government and the violent overthrowing of other governments. Since very few people are entirely bad or entirely good, this is also true of the leaders of the United States during the postwar years. These were the years that the changing of our laws have gone unnoticed.
The transformation of the U.S. republic into an aristocracy had its basis in the corporate power accrued by the WWII war industries and their influence on the legislative branch. During the Eisenhower Administration, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother James Dulles, Director of the CIA, set policies aimed to secure the safety of the United States. Their anti-Communist philosophy formed the basis for postwar American foreign policy as well as domestic policies and the economy.
At the start of the Nixon Administration, the post-war economic euphoria came to an abrupt end. President Nixon introduced economic measures that were a mixture of social equality along with austerity measures that weakened the social safety net, decreased the maximum taxation levels for the rich, and encouraged corporate mergers. His conservative taxing policies were later expanded during the Reagan Administration.
In addition, educational reform under the Nixon Administration focused on technical skills and factual knowledge. Holistic, values-driven, understanding, and questioning of subject matter, along with the creative humanities, were uniformly discouraged. Teaching about the processes and responsibilities for living in a republican form of government along with the founding philosophy of the United States disappeared from the public curriculum.
The lowering of taxes for rich corporations and individuals allowed for more rapid accumulation of wealth by the aristocracy. Shifting education away from principles and values to a technically oriented, factual basis for education evolved in due course into No Child Left Behind program. Removing Civics from the curriculum is instrumental in the public's failure to recognize subtle changes in the United States governance. The development of "dirty tricks" and outright lies within the GOP that influence elections has continued and become increasingly more sophisticated and accepted. These taken together (the conservative economics, single focus in education, and electoral dirty tricks) formed a basis for the transformation of the U.S. republic into an aristocracy.
Under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, there were attempts to strengthen the safety nets for the poor and slow the shift toward an aristocracy. The transformation of the republic seemed dormant. It was the Reagan administration's economic philosophy, Reaganomics, which formed the next big step in the transformation of U.S. governance.
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