Democracy demands an opposition party. |
Foreign rightwing fundamentalists attacked the United States. Domestic rightwing fundamentalists took the spotlight. And everywhere, progressives, liberals, and moderates either fell in behind them, or retreated into the shadows . . . We have seen the consequences. |
If history has ended, it has been stopped at remarkable cost to the average US citizen. |
Retreat usually leads to defeat. |
Surrender is rarely good strategy. |
There is a cat |
Thirty years after drafting the US Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson warned of the dangers posed by the corporation, writing of the need to "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Today, instead, the aristocracy of the corporation has grown to full maturity, wielding power over the state and its laws in the service of corporate aims. |
Were the radical democratic impulses of the American Revolution still driving US politics, it would be difficult to imagine corporatization of the kind witnessed today. But that impulse has weakened, and the relationship between the people and the corporation has reversed. |