Michael Moore in his movie Sicko spoke of the choice between the "me" and the "we" society. The conservative understands the "me" society too well: promoters of this ideology have been working for over forty years to set the United States into the concrete of the "me" society. Every man for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost.
The great problem with this idea of "social Darwinism," is that it ignores those who are least likely to be able to protect themselves against the profound carnage caused by testosterone driven males, and their female emulators: The elderly, children, and those who care for them.
For my November 22, 2009 article, "The Social Element of Social Capitalism," I wrote the following introduction:
"'Women and children first!' cried the Titanic's Captain as she prepared for her final, fatal plunge. In our modern world, I believe that how we treat children and the opposite sex is a direct reflection of how we react to different and diverse peoples and ideas. There are few if any supporters of the ERA in the KKK; we need to examine the basis for this truth.
The Savings and Loan Scandal, the Dot-com Bubble, Enron and the rest of the over-leveraged companies (including Bernie Madoff's theft of $50 billion), the Crash of 2008, the Sub-Prime Mortgage Debacle, as well as the upcoming Student Loan Fiasco, have all been caused by the "me" people. They first crippled the regulatory agencies that were supposed to watch over the finance, insurance and real estate industries. They then changed the law so their crimes were harder to prosecute. Without the repeal of the New Deal acts that held Wall Street's excesses in check over the last 30 years (especially the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999), as well as the intentional weakening of the regulatory agencies, the Wall Street Crash would not have happened.
To paraphrase Honorà © Balzac, "Behind every great fortune lies a great crime." Only criminals want laws that are designed to protect society repealed, simply because those laws reduce the amount of loot they can steal. The Congress has not only the power, but the duty--under the Commerce Clause of Article I, Section 8, together with the XIVth Amendment to the Constitution--to ensure that equal justice for all American citizens is practiced by corporations within its jurisdiction. Caveat Emptor is--I believe--neither a legal nor a moral option.
The "me" society we have seen in the last thirty years has nearly bankrupted our nation. The "we" society of the previous 35 years led to the greatest period of prosperity in our nation's history. It was disrupted not by any problem with its underlying concepts, but by a ten year long war in Vietnam that was fought for the "me's" of the military-industrial complex. Further harm was caused by listening to that same group of "me's", instead of the people who were warning us that we would reach our peak oil production in 1971, after which we would become increasingly dependent on foreign oil, whose price we would not be able to control. The cost of both bit us in the ass in 1978. This allowed conservatives--including Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and Alan Greenspan--to successfully lie about and undermine the economics of John Maynard Keynes. With their lies, they undercut the public's confidence in the "we" society.
We are now paying the price for believing those lies. We have: an admitted unemployment rate of 9.1%; real unemployment rate of at least 16%; and an "underemployment" rate of another 9%. Our foreclosure rate is higher than at any time since the Great Depression. Schools are being forced to reduce their classroom days from five to four days a week. Teachers, firefighters, and police are being laid off. Charity hospitals and free clinics are closing, leaving the poor no place to go for non-emergency medicine. Those of us who have jobs are discovering our wages are stagnant, and our benefits are being reduced. And the rich want their taxes reduced. Again.
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