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Shahla
Money Managing Guru
Joined: 13 Nov 2004
Posts: 3324
Cash Points ££ 126163.28
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 Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 6:18 am Post subject: Dreaming of Democracy |
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What is this thing called democracy? So easy to talk about, so difficult to make real. Pure democracy is not what our Founders gave us. Who would want a simple majority to control the minority? Instead, America was given a representative democracy within a constitutional republic where laws that protect all people trump majority rule.
Standing between majority-won elections and government power are elected representatives: writing, overseeing and implementing laws. But when you can no longer trust the elected representatives what happens to American democracy? It becomes an oxymoron.
We have arrived at a delusional democracy. Delusional because Americans overwhelmingly cannot admit the painful truth that their limited democracy no longer works for the good of most citizens. Instead, through corruption and dishonesty, our representative democracy has morphed into a plutocracy that serves the wealthy, power elites and corporate masters that control the political system and through that the economic system.
The Framers of the Constitution had deep concerns about the long-term viability of the government structure they created. Some think that the checks and balances among the three branches of the federal government preserve its integrity. Really? The money that controls the legislative branch also controls the executive branch, and both of those control the judicial branch. Even worse, it has become clearer to increasing numbers of Americans that many parts of the Constitution – the supreme law of the land – have been directly or more deviously disobeyed or distorted. Constitutional rule is a myth.
We have a Congress that gives its constitutional power to declare war to the President and refuses to impeach him for his many violations of laws. We have a President that openly signs laws but says he will not honor them. We have a Supreme Court that decides who becomes President rather than the voters and often amends the Constitution unconstitutionally. We have elections that are not to be trusted. We have a government using free trade globalization hogwash to sell out the middle class. We have rising economic inequality that is creating a two-class society: the wealthy Upper Class and the Lower Class for everyone else.
Overlaid on this delusional system is the myth that having just two major political parties somehow is right and necessary for our representative democracy.
In reality, partisan differences are just another layer of corruption, dishonesty and deceit. Artificial political competition distracts. Big money from the wealthy and corporate and other special interests controls both parties, producing mutually assured corruption. They are two faces of the same coin, two heads of the same monster, two puppets controlled by the same masters. Of course the two-party system provides stability. It has stabilized a criminally corrupt government.
Delusional political competition supports a delusional democracy based on a set of delusional checks and balances. The whole system that once worked has become a sham.
Did the Framers anticipate that their system could become such a travesty? They did.
So, in addition to the better known parts of the Constitution, they imbedded what might be called a legal loophole – a kind of escape clause, just in case things went terribly wrong. They have.
The public is largely ignorant of Article V's option for a convention, when asked for by two-thirds of states, to propose amendments to the Constitution. Worse, nearly all people with political power have opposed using it. Even worse, despite Article V explicitly saying that Congress “shall” call such a convention when a sufficient number of states have asked for one – and that is the ONLY specified constitutional requirement – for over 200 years Congress has willfully disobeyed the constitution and NOT granted a convention. In fact, Congress never had the integrity and constitutional respect to even set up a system of any kind to collect state requests for an Article V convention. Still, we know from the hard work of many that there have been well over 500 such state requests.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article578.html |
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