The fix is easily stated: to save democracy we must reduce gross inequities in wealth.
The actions to return us to more equal shares in
dollars and government are less easily stated and, frankly, less palatable in
this "me-first/country-last" culture that money and greed have established. We could significantly raise taxes on
the wealthiest. We could require that no
one in a corporation or its contractors be paid less than 10% of the top
remuneration in the corporation. We
could not effectively limit the lobbying or advertising that money buys. We must, rather, afford even that form of
free speech to more of our citizens.
Lincoln wondered whether a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal could long endure. Patriots today must reshape our economy to empower more of our citizenry, or we answer him in the negative.
And then
If we have the character to bring our economy back into the service of our democracy, then we will have the tools to address the issues that beset thinking, caring, willful people, rather than having those issues drowned in the tsunami of carefully constructed lies that distort legislative and policy effects, and money-hyped distractions that leave us vacant when it comes to dealing with the widespread issues of our personal and societal well-being.
With a government more broadly beholden to its people, we can address basic questions of tax structure, government solvency, finance-industry regulation, personal economic security, educational opportunity, public and environmental health, and global concerns of war, peace, trade, and environmental stability. We will be more able to build rational policy around the traditional Republican/Democratic balance of personal and social responsibility, rather than sell policy to a wealthy minority. We can, in fact, exercise democracy.
The people of this nation want democracy. We voted for Obama and "Change." Citizens are Occupying Wall Street. A few voices cry in the wilderness, but where is the swell of corporate and political leadership necessary to restore democracy? Where are the legislative leaders boldly designing how we can hang together lest we hang separately, as Benjamin Franklin put it? Where are today's patriots?
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