|
Post by Trublu on Sept 23, 2007 19:41:31 GMT -5
The Death of Conservatism, Part 2BY Richard Belzer Posted September 14, 2007 | 03:00 PM (EST) What do you get when 55 rich white landowners gather to form a more perfect union, establish justice and ensure domestic tranquility? A system that to this day protects the interests of the very rich! One of the main reasons George Washington was chosen as the first president was because he was in fact the richest man in the country (from hemp farming among other things) and was expected to protect the interests of the elite. This entailed slavery, not empowering women, defining Native Americans as savages, blacks as barely human, and ensuring that only landowners could vote. Suppression of the poor and disenfranchised was endemic to the system. To this day (particularly) the so-called Supreme Court has consistently ruled in favor of corporate interests and against the individual in case after case. They've also ruled against affirmative action -- ignoring years of systemic racism that still exists to a disturbing degree. Several members of the current High Court are aggressively (and some would say heartlessly) determined to further empower the powerful and diminish -- and in some cases ridicule -- the rights of the people. We the People. To be continued...
|
|
|
Post by Trublu on Sept 29, 2007 12:48:24 GMT -5
The Death of Conservatism, Part 3BY Richard Belzer Posted September 27, 2007 | 10:17 PM (EST) To understand why conservatism is dying, it is instructive to see how it came full bloom in the Gilded Age. This era is indelibly depicted in Age of Betrayal, a brilliant book by Atlantic Monthly senior editor Jack Beatty. Here is how the book's jacket captures the time: "The Gilded Age in America, when an oligarchy of wealth triumphed over democracy, when dreams of freedom and equality died of their impossibility. Jay Gould, the 'Mesphisto of Wall Street,' never runs for office -- but he rules." "This was his time (and John D. Rockefeller's and Andrew Carnegie's), and this was his country. At the end of the Civil War, with the rebellion put down and slavery ended, America belonged to Lincoln's "plain people." But "government of the people" and economic democracy were betrayed by political parties that fanned memories of the war to distract Americans from government of the corporation." Beatty "gives us a fresh look at the 'revolution from above' of industrialization that forged modern America... Supreme Court justices turn the Fourteenth Amendment's promise of 'equal protection of the laws' to the freed slave into the shield of the corporate person.' The presidents of the Pennsylvania and Southern Pacific railroads engage in a bidding war for congressmen. A depression brought on by railroad speculation throws millions out of work, the hungry riot for bread in Buffalo, the homeless sleep on Chicago's streets, 'tramps are arrested, strikers are shot, and the nation's presidents avert their eyes." "In the 1890s the Populist revolt from below challenges the revolution from above. Entrepreneurial capitalism ends in the early 1900s, as 1,800 giant firms are compacted into 157 behemoths. God instructs President McKinley to invade Cuba and seize the Philippines from Spain; turning from liberators to occupiers, U.S. troops slaughter and starve the (Roman Catholic) Filipinos in the name of 'Christianizing' them. In perpetrating this 'infamy,' William James cries out, 'We have puked up our traditions'--revealing how these sordid decades had remade us. Beatty's book is "a passionate, gripping, often shocking history of wealth over commonwealth--thirty-five years of American history in which we see the reflection of today's gilded age." I highly recommend it. To be continued...
|
|
|
Post by Finaddict on Sept 29, 2007 21:47:46 GMT -5
I love Richard Belzer but I must object to some of the contents of these 2 articles. I have no problem with anyone's politics and Belz is certainly entitled to his opinion, but I am mighty tired of attacks on the Founding Fathers of this nation. I also find his comments and that of Beatty about wealth infuriating. Belz is fairly wealthy. Does he intend to give the money back.
Are conservatives wealthier than liberals. I think that The Kennedy family, John Kerry, John Edwards and Diane Feinstein and the Clintons just to name a few, can certainly put that myth to rest. Someone needs to remind Belz and Beatty that the backgrounds of liberal are not with out fault.
Is big business to blame for all the ills of the 19th and early 20th century? I think not. Where there abuses of workers during this time, of course. Hence the brave men who lead the Union Movement.
In a time when this country needs to come together, I find this kind of rhetoric to be harmful. This is the greatest nation in the world. Were our founding fathers perfect, hell no. BUT they put together a great nation. One people flocked to and are still flocking to.
We must be doing something right.
|
|