It is an interesting idea on the table these days, heard not just here but that I have read elsewhere for months in newspapers and magazines and online, that our government is so large and so powerful and so terrifying that we should not allow it to fix the problems facing us today.
We stand in the wake of an economic ruin. The rubble is all around us, and the smoke is still rising. It is no mystery as to the spark which let off the bomb. Massive greed fueling an unregulated marketplace allowed everyone to overreach…and the topple was, my friends, a foregone conclusion.
Yet, even now, there are those still moving through the ruin waving flags and clamoring upon the wreckage and shouting to all of us that it was not corporate greed that led us here, that it was not private enterprise that is at fault, that it was not deregulation which brought us to our knees. There are still those who shout to the few rafters which remain that this is not the market’s fault, and that if we change the rules now we will never recover.
Government, they say, is what we should fear.
The truth is something different.
For we should fear neither private business nor government, as businessmen are our neighbors and government is ourselves. We must first recognize this fact if we are to take hold of our democracy and steer the ship to a better course. Recognize it, because until we do we remain paralyzed by our fear.
American democracy is not a battle between the private sector and the government. It is a partnership between the two, but each side can, and has, made a grasp for power which can overthrow this balance.
In our infancy, our founding fathers fought a political tyranny. They overthrew a government which controlled the lives and destinies of the average American, at a whim, through inherited political power. This royalist privilege gave power to a government which had no consent of the governed, and they never would.
Our forefathers fought and died to break this tyranny, and to leave to us the rights we have today, which they knew from firsthand experience were worth dying for.
Today, the pendulum has swung, but the system is once again out of balance, and the result is the same.
The same tyranny exists today, as it did before, but instead of political power it is economic power which regulates our lives. And this power has slowly become concentrated in the hands of the very, very few, and their hold of the lives of very, very many is just as strong and dug in as the grasp of King George all those years ago.
We constantly hear the cry today for the ‘free market.’ But when power resides in the hands of only a few, the market is no longer free. Instead of free enterprise, we have privileged enterprise, and the average man and woman is granted privilege only when it pleases the corporation.
We have been here before, in 1929, when corporate America overstepped…and fell. At the time, one man recognized this for what it was. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, in the midst of the Great Depression, speaking of the new economic royalists, that they had “concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor—other people’s lives.”
As Americans we need to look ourselves blankly in the mirror and sober up to our reality. For the ship is sinking, the water is rushing in, and we need every sober hand on deck, bucket in hand and strong back ready.
The time for finger-pointing has come and passed. One Obama/GE is as good as a Bush/Exxon-Mobile. And neither matters much unless we change the way we do our business, the way we run our government.
We need, desperately, to embrace the level-headed wisdom that nothing is sane at the extremes; the firmest ground is in the middle.
Political autocracy on the one side is a roadmap for tyranny. At the other end, so is unregulated free-market capitalism.
President Obama, if he is lucky and talented and skillful enough, may be able to bring us back from the brink. To do so, he will need to break the backs of the mighty corporations which own and control this nation. That will not be an easy task, and there will be much decrying of socialism! and communism! as he tries to do so. But these cries, which claim that President Obama is attempting to overthrow American institutions, are merely the cries of those in power who wish not to lose it.
But the time has come.
If we are lucky, Teddy’s big stick is still there, gathering dust in a White House closet. And if we’re lucky, Obama will find it rests comfortably in his hands.
3 comments:
Read less and experience more Ty....the businesses that are being hurt are not large corporations it is the small businesses that provide the majority of jobs in this country, those that have 10, 20, 30 to a few hundred employee's. They and other American's who just happen to make through their own hard work provide the jobs that allow all of us "regular" folk to pay the ordinary taxes and they will be paying the "5%" because they qualify for the making over $300,000. That will then be passed on to the consumer, it will reduce labor because the businesses will have to cut back and one of the largest expenses in business is labor. My company administers self funded plans, insurance, claims etc. Since last fall the companies we continue to provide benefits administration for have a total loss of employee's (due to layoff) of over 7500. That is happening across the country, more people to be dependent on the government for unemployment benefits, looking for any job to make ends meet, increasing the homeless population etc. etc. Obama is overreaching as did Bush and in my opinion they are on the same side of the fence both far more for government control which any right minded individual should be "terrified of" because you may like the ever so charismatic Obama but he is only in power for 2-8 years and who knows who will come next! I am truly frustrated with the government, the country and my countryman! Ok, enough said, it has been a long hot miserable day in the mines so to speak. Love you no matter what your opinions are. Have a great weekend. Give your mom a big hug for me. Aunt Sue
Please excuse my typos, my vision is not what it once was. :)
Well said Tyler, balance. It is so easy to turn the world into us vs. them, black vs. white, gov. vs. business, etc. But reality is 99% of the time not that simple. And especially the fact that the government is us, we are the goverment!! That is the point of this democracy! If we see government as bad, what are we critisizing other nations for?? We apparently do not have controll of our own terrifying government.
I think because so few of us know enough about our system and how it works and what it takes from us to run it, too many are instead afraid of it and complaining no matter who is 'in charge'.
Of course we need businesses to thrive, it is simple, barter and trade is what makes the world go round, no matter how complex. But that doesn't mean business men have the best interest of the majority, the minority or the vulnerable, etc. etc. in mind when running businesses. That is why we have elected officials.
Well this is a big country!! So everything is more complex, takes more learning, searching, keeping on top of by the citizens. So I think those who really care are involved, pure and simple. Our system allows for this, just most of us don't take advantage.
Thank you for discussing this important issue so bluntly. Breath of fresh air.
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