"Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.
"These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America.
"What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. But our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power.
"Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike."
The morbidly rich are once again "thirsting for power," reaching out for control over government itself.
The Maine state co-chair of the Koch-funded ALEC, Rep. Nathan Wadsworth, R-Hiram, has introduced legislation calling for a new Constitutional Convention, the first since 1787, to rewrite our constitution.
Republicans in over 30 states have already done the same; they're within a few states of pulling it off, and have already had annual rehearsals of the Convention in Washington, DC, for the past several years.
In recent years, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus like Rep. Mark Pocan have played the role of Rusticus and FDR in our modern era.
Unfortunately, as a result of a series of legislative, FCC, and Executive Branch actions, most of our major media is now owned outright or controlled in large part by the morbidly rich, so their voices are rarely heard as loudly as those of Paul Revere or Franklin Roosevelt were in their days. (For a vivid example of how this works, check out www.theyrule.net.)
While the morbidly rich have had periods of virtually absolute rule in America -- during the Andrew Jackson era, the Gilded Age in the late 1800s, and during the Roaring 20s -- have always been American patriots (Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, arguably even JFK/LBJ) who have stood up and blocked their plans to turn American into a neo-feudal state.
If they're able to rewrite our constitution, however, even the thought experiment of a nation without billionaires will become impossible. They will have not only locked up the food, but pretty much everything else as well.
The fate of American democracy, and the future of what's left of our middle class, now hangs in the balance.
And as both FDR and Sanders/Warren/Pocan have repeatedly pointed out, only the power of organized people can restrain the power of organized money.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
6
5
4
