DOME MAGAZINE: Spring 1998, Vol. 10 | No. 3
What are we really talking about? Webster says democracy has several definitions: 1) Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives. 2) A political or social unit based on this form of rule. 3) A social condition of equality and respect for the individual within the community.
The above definitions are spelled out in the Constitution and have worked reasonably well for over 200 years. But something has gone wrong. Perhaps the word is greed, or is it power? Or a combination of both. Is the American dream drifting away, as we watch the gulf widen between the haves and the have-nots?
Each day we see evidence that the democratic system as we know it is slipping away. I do not believe that this is a “chicken little” observation, but a real fact backed by real information. It is only necessary to look at the uniting of the world’s large corporations to realize that we are rapidly losing our ability to make purchasing decisions based on competitive prices. Competition is being erased right before our eyes.
Anti-Trust Act
Long ago, the United States passed a law to eliminate the possibility of any group of corporations banding together to eliminate competition. This is known as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Has it worked in the past? Yes, until the end of this century, when the system seemed to get out of control.
Today, large companies are uniting with their competitors, with impunity, to eliminate competition. We see corporations in all of the major industries (aeronautics, information, electronics, transportation and may other fields) joining together for what purpose? The reason put forward is to become more efficient. But to what ends? What has happened? Has our government been infiltrated to the extent that we as individuals do not now have the protection for which the original act was intended?
The real scary part is that there is little difference between the major parties where corporate greed and corporate manipulation of our government is concerned.
Our founding fathers knew what the problems of unjust taxation were all about, having been subject to excess taxation by the British, and they were quite specific that the money supply would be controlled by the government (people) when they wrote the Constitution. What happened?
The Federal Reserve System
The Congress changed the law to produce the private banking system called the Federal Reserve, and a few years later the Internal Revenue Department to give the Fed the muscle to collect taxes.
This system of tax collection was originally designed to be fair and equitable, but what happened? Since its inception the original tax code has been rewritten and expanded hundreds of times, to the extent that it contains thousands of pages of rules and regulations so that few people, if any, know for certain what it contains. This is an obscene law that has taken on a life of its own, after having been edited to protect the large corporations and the wealthy. The last Congress was intent on making good changes, but it failed. These changes added over one thousand pages to the already over-stuffed code. And most of the changes were the result of intense lobbying by corporate and wealthy interests.
Rumblings are heard today, relating to the unfairness of the administration of the tax code. But will it ever reach the intensity of the Boston Tea Party? I doubt it. Whenever new and more equitable tax systems are put forth, there is a unified front presented to make sure that it does not happen.
So, if money is not the root of all political evil, it comes in a good second. Bucky’s Grunch of Giants spelled out what was happening some time ago. Corporate greed is rapidly making inroads into our democratic society by corrupting our political system.
The citizens of our country have the opportunity to correct the course that is being set for us, but the sad fact is that many potential voters stay home on election day. And that lack of interest may be the ultimate reason for the demise of the democratic society as we know it.