ELECTRIC CITIZEN
OPINION
This is the second in a series of 3 essays on American style democracy. Not updated since 2000

The Internet is the greatest information explosion to mankind since the Gutenberg printing press. 
This is making it harder and harder for the GOP to hide the obsolescence of it's self- serving, oppressive, old world ideology.
              


Common Sense 2000

By Lazarus Wolf

In the beginning of America's democracy the well educated, white- washed elite were there fighting for their rightful station at the top of the order. The ruling aristocracy are still trying to "conserve" their elevated status. The very definition of conservative is to conserve the old way of doing things.  Having never been ruled, how can they understand democracy? What need do they have for it? Perpetuating their lofty position in life comes quite natural, drawing only from their peer group. Conservatives, by design, favor this plutocratic mentality in concept and in application. Repressively narrow to the masses. Rewarding for the meritorious apostles of greed.

The necessity for democracy is obvious as Albert Einstein pointed out, --"most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior."---

 Democracy recognized that there would always be a few in the elite that have not evolved past their ruthless predatory instincts and would therefore need to be regulated by government. Examples are child working laws, minimum wage, universal emergency medical care, social security, unemployment insurance, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Hated most by the predators is a tax structure that forces the very top income to be redistributed to the very poor, the heart of Keynesian economics, the long established model for our growth since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Unlike predators, humans know that what they do affects their symbiotic peers. Our compassionate intellect allow us to design our world to enrich the environment. Our intellect balances compassion with necessity. Necessity, compassion, and intellect in harmony are balancing components. Democracy is essentially the intellectual extension of this in application.

An examination of the conservative agenda over recent history proves the negative effect of greed motivated capitalism over humane motivated capitalism with countless examples. Even commandeering religion as the far right movement has tried to do with Christianity. The "New Right" conservatism has grown out of the perpetuation of a ruling class mentality. Nothing can be further from Christianity. It's not just Christianity that they have exploited. The hard core right wing from every religion attracts zealous conservatives, easily manipulated by the limited boundaries of their dogma:

  • Misquoting and misinterpreted holy Christian and Jewish scripture to enforce their selfish ambition and narrow focus to the point of blasphemy. The founder of Christianity himself said "a house divided against itself will fall." The religious right in America has divided the house of God down party lines.

Business can depend on the corruption of their grand old allies. For this reason the pro business Republicans raise twice as much money as the Democrats do, yet, lose elections. How is this possible? Their anti labor, antihuman, anti-family, anti ethnic, anti environment ideas are designed to"conserve" the old, all white power structure. Hiding these facts from the public is the only way the GOP can gain support. They must lie. The conservative's strangle hold on all media constantly propagate the illusions they need us to keep believing, devoid of common sense.

Democrats, reflecting the concerns of the masses, are pro worker, pro-family, pro-women, pro-rights now have to take all the money they can get in this corrupt system.  This flood of PAC money to the political landscape is the root cause of corruption in politics.

The conservative propaganda campaign for the past 25 years has been selling the ludicrous idea that conservative stands for God and America. -The sub-text of this message, 'act like us, (act white) and you're American', is unwittingly implied - it has been successful in convincing millions of uninformed Americans that a strong since of moral character equates that they must be conservative. Of course, this is far from the truth. What honor is there in trying to conserve control of America to the richest 1 percent of it's population? An America where people blindly consume, and are divided in the most superficial ways serve their agenda perfectly.

Far and away more Americans have classic liberal views:

  • Free thinking

  • Integrity/Accountability

  • Civil rights for ALL people

  • Universal quality public education

  • A social safety net

  • Worker rights/Unions

  • Protection of environment - Balancing both the business and public interests with natural requirements for sustained ecosystem viability/Compromise neither

  • Social/Ethnic/Religious/Political/Gender/Sexual tolerance

  • Religious freedom

  • Law applied equally to the rich as well as the poor

  • Capitalism regulated by government

    Liberal really means liberated, from repression. The very definition of liberal is in the heart of every person who seeks a just world, balanced by the compassionate intellect and the desires of all people who love democracy.

    Modern liberalism came of age after the policies of the three Republican presidents, Warren Harding (1920-1923), Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) and Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) were perceived to cause the crash of the stock market in 1929, followed by the Great Depression, (using the same policies Reagan would later use, getting the same results), the American people overwhelmingly voted the Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, into the presidency.

    Roosevelt enacted sweeping changes that fundamentally fine-tuned our democracy, shifting much more power into the hands of the citizens and away from the business elite. The bitter hatred of liberals by conservatives stems from this period.

    The merciless manipulation of the stock market, at the expense of thousands of banks that failed, and the loss of millions of American's savings in those closings, motivated Roosevelt to appoint Joseph Kennedy as the first Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Kennedy was responsible for drafting legislation which would regulate the business dealings of Wall Street. This act marked Kennedy as a traitor by the elite. A vendetta which conservatives carry to this day.

    In response to this democratization, the big business class coalesced into the conservative right wing in the Republican party, putrefied on the brittle skeleton of the "Old South" ideology.


<>                                                                                                      Part 2: Brood of Vipers

                                                                                                         
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