hat tip to John Lounsbury, GEI
Americans Are Sick to Death of Both Parties: Why Our Politics Is in Worse Shape Than We Thought
Hear, hear!!!
Besides. Our 1st Pres, George Washington explicitly warned us that this would happen, and begged us not to start factions; aka political parties.
The main goal in writing the US Constitution was to make it impossible for factions to arise and ruin democracy. Unfortunately, our Constitution was completely sold out, before the ink was even dry. As are many causes. Rebellions are always justified, but revolutions are always betrayed?
Political parties = a strategy for confusing, dividing and conquering an electorate. Factions.
How do YOU spell "Benedict Arnold?"
"Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent." Benjamin Disraeli
Time for a new, non-party? Just vote on issues and a cascade of representatives? They don't have to be part of an avowed faction.
Ain't it the truth? Quit arguing with your neighbors, and start opposing those few in the Upper Looting Class who want you sidetracked arguing with your neighbors and - you guessed it - divided & conquered.
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ps: "The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. . . . You have owners."
- George Carlin, The American Dream
Very well said, Roger. I appreciate the cartoons, too.
"1. In my nineteenth year, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army with which I set free the state, which was oppressed by the domination of a faction. " Augustus 14 AD
http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deeds.html
Yeah, Matt,
James Madison read that same quote, over 200 years ago, and used it as the founding principle for writing checks & balances into the US Constitution. (Then he promptly joined a political party! Go figure.)
Banksters, of course, immediately translated Madison's original words as "Cheques & balances."
And people don't think that semantics is important.
We're all unwitting Sophists now ...
... in the hands of Control Frauds .... if we're not careful, and vigilant.
You're our neighbours alright, stay on your side of the border and we'll get along just fine.
And it's check, not cheque you Yankees.
C'mon, get with it! The main goal in writing the US Constitution was to make it impossible for the people to arise and INSTALL democracy. Checks and balances were all about keeping power in the hands of the slavers, land speculators (on native lands under the Quebec Act), and speculators in colonial scrip, which is to say almost all of the US founding fathers. The loyalists were more ethnically and religiously diverse, far less likely to own slaves, and beholden to an empire which had, for the time being at least, worked out an pact of non-aggression with native people west of the Appalachians. Read the Federalist Papers, for goodness sake. Hamilton made some darn good arguments about limiting the power of the states through the power of the Federal government, and thereby promoting a balance of interests. However, the main concern of the framers of the US Constitution was to ensure that only the wealthy could continue to control the legislative and executive branches. The class war waged by US oligarchs has continued almost unabated ever since. Checks and balances are just means to undermine the public purpose in favour of select private interest. Scrap the current constitution, adopt parliamentary politics with a symbolic president and mixed-member proportional representation, and you will be much happier!
Hamilton was also the dude who took British banker partners to start the Bank of NY.
Every person of interest in history, is surrounded by a veritable cloud of parasitic temptations.
It's never fully clear whom to trust ... even yourself, given so many confusing temptations.
@ Pearce Tournier
Well said.
The US Constitution is long in the tooth and historically dated. Good heavens, it enshrines slavery under sanctity of contract! It is a bourgeois document through and through, aimed at transferring power from the hereditary British monarch and aristocracy to the bourgeoisie (ownership class). The objective was not "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." As you say, the political debate at the time, e.g., as recorded in the Federalist Papers, shows this historically. The US Constitution and ensuing precedent are thoroughly "liberal" in the 18th century sense of bourgeois. Neither John Locke nor any of the other notables of the Enlightenment were populists. They wanted to see power wrested from the hereditary kings and aristocracy of Europe and vested in the bourgeoisie, who they regarded as more capable of managing the affairs of countries. They wanted republics in which the rabble could be controlled, e.g., by a property ownership qualification to vote.
Hamilton was also the dude who took British banker partners to start the Bank of NY.
Right. But in Hamilton's defense here, he realized that the newly formed country needed to build a platform of strength politically through centralization and economically by adopting proven methods.
However, he and others also realized that they could not adopt the British system of free trade and needed to adopt the American system of protectionism instead.
The US later jettisoned the American system and condemned its use by future emerging countries. However, they maintained and expanded the financial model they had adopted from the Old World.
Historically, the US succeeded the British Empire as an empire controlling global commerce through rule of the sea (and now air).
The US copied a lot of things from Britain. They weren't anti-British. They were Brits themselves and they wanted to free themselves from the hereditary monarchy and aristocracy but kept most of the British organization and institutional arrangements that made Britain successful as a country and world power.
So the US became a projection of Britain without the hereditary monarchy and aristocracy. That is to say, they jettisoned the feudal remnants they viewed as a social, political and economic drag, while promoting the interests of the ownership class/managerial class.
@ Tom Hickey Very well said. But, I wonder if it might not be more accurate to turn matters around a little. It is not even clear to me that the US "founding fathers" sought to replace the Crown. I mean, I think they were more interested in having access to the Ohio Valley than angry about the rights of aristocracy per se. That's a quibble, but they were angry about having their specific claims rebuffed by Buckingham Palace and Whitehall, and then sought an ideological justification for their rebellion, reinstalling a king in the form of the US presidency. I know that that is a quibble, and would never dispute Madison's or Hamilton's geniuses. Anti-aristocratic sentiment may have been implicit in US exasperation with British belly-gazing and its metropolitan disregard of American realities, but I don't think that was obvious to the revolutionaries until hostilities began. Incidentally, for any who have not read it, I recommend US historian Fred Anderson's book the Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766. New York: Knopf Publishing Group, 2000.
Right. No reason to quibble. The way I see it is that the founders had no intention at first to cut loose from the mother country. They just wanted to be left alone to do what they could see to be the best way to manage things "from the floor." Once they realized that they would not be left alone, they either had to kowtow and undercut their opportunities or else cut loose.
Tories were still strong and things could have gone differently. Some wanted to crown Washington but he refused.
I don't think that any of the 18 century enlightenment figures were revolutionaries either. They just wanted a longer leash.
But the germ of freedom as a "natural right" was there in their thinking. This was antithetical to the justification of hereditary rule based on good birth, or the divine right of kings based on the great chain of being.
It was pretty clearly a bourgeois tendency, too, in that none of these people thought remotely that ordinary people could manage their own lives without direction, let alone a country. given the general level of education at the time, that may have had some basis to it.
The context of the time was complicated by many factors that shaped it. To try and summarize these factors in a few paragraphs is simplistic, but in hindsight, it is possible to identity some of the principal players and chief factors — but from the point of view of our times.
That context has disappeared and the study of history can only approximate it terms that we can relate to today.
Given the context of the time, the break the founding fathers made from being colonists to creators of a form of government and officials in it that shaped the development of institutions and precedent is amazing.
That should not be minimized but it shouldn't be idealized either. It was a hugely important historical moment in the dialectic, but time has moved on and with it the Zeitgeist.
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