The Death of Conservatism, Part 2

What do you get when 55 rich white landowners gather to form a more perfect union, establish justice and ensure 
domestic tranquility? A system that to this day protects the interests of the very rich! One of the main reasons George Washington was chosen as the first president was because he was in fact the richest man in the country (from hemp farming among other things) and was expected to protect the interests of the elite.

This entailed slavery, not empowering women, defining Native Americans as savages, blacks as barely human, and ensuring that only landowners could vote. Suppression of the poor and 
disenfranchised was endemic to the system. To this day (particularly) the so-called Supreme Court has consistently ruled in favor of corporate interests and against the individual in case after case. They've also ruled against affirmative action -- ignoring years of systemic racism that still exists to a disturbing degree. Several members of the current High Court are aggressively (and some would say heartlessly) determined to further empower the powerful and diminish -- and in some cases ridicule -- the rights of the people. We the People.

To be continued...

Comments

[Sons]

Quickly, we learn one thing about Richard Belzer.

He is very weak in American history.

Washington, for example. This man was tough, strong and 100% a patriot of ALL the people. He was NOT the richest man in America. Even Franklin was wealthier.

Brave to a fault, Washington had bullets pierce his clothing he was so close to the action.

Washington expressed guilt about owning slaves, treated his people exceptionally well and freed them in his will.

This was a man completely committed to the concept of government and freedom etched in our Declaration and Constitution.

The people loved him so and trusted him completely. Suggestions were made by some he become our King. He would hear none of it.

There exists a rich historical literature on our history. Mr. Belzer needs to do some serious homework.

[Qbear]

The conservatives in George Washington's day had a name.....Torries.

[backhandpath]

There is that.

[randyjet]

The comments on Washington are a bit off and unfair. He risked ALL his wealth and his life in taking up the American cause and profited little from it. As for his view of his slaves, I suggest you read the book An Imperfect God, Washington and Slavery. In it the author shows his evolving views on slavery, until at the end of his life he freed his slaves and gave them pensions and land to live on. He was much influenced by the man he considered to be nearly his son, Lafayette, who was involved in abolitionist projects after the Revolution.
One of the most astounding facts I got from the book is that blacks made up 25% of the Continental Army and was fully integrated. So when Washington looked out over his troops, he saw an awful lot a black faces, even more than today is the current military. That had a powerful effect on his consciousness.
As for the British being part of the slave trade, they did NOT start it. BUT they DID use force to KILL it. They were the first to do so. Telling only ONE side of the story is NOT history. Muslims today are STILL active in the slave trade and some have even called for a RETURN to it.

[CRB]

But ... Corporatism is not Conservatism. Controlling business interests have been dominant since bribery and graft came into existence.
Corporations bought out modern liberals to get the funds invested in the Great Society and they're doing the same things with modern conservatives.
Slavery was not conservative. The end of slavery was not *merely* Liberal. Don't forget that most of Christendom had dropped slavery, and that the Christian voice was loudest in both England and the US to end our respective systems. Don't forget Wilberforce, Whitfield, Wesley, and John Newton and the significant social changes that came during the 18th c.

Collin
http://evangelicalperspective.blogspot.com

[guajiro]

What is your point? Richard is not arguing that corporatism is conservatism. And your link implies that Richard argues for doing away with corporations: "It seems that he wants a different America, but he can't have it. It doesn't exist. It can't, unless all corporations are done away with. All business, all influence.". Mr. Selzer argues for no such thing. Doing away with the undue influence brought about by the 'person' status of corporations is a partial solution to the bigger problem of laws our constitution has evolved into. Corporations, without the 'person' status, are still useful tools for raising capital, because the corporation status for money pooled for investment, protects that capital/money from lawsuits,etc. No, doing away with the corruptness, the corrosive, undue influence of money in a supposed democratic society is the goal.

[Robert59]

What Belzer fails to do is keep things in their historical perspective. Those 55 were way ahead of their time, but they hadn't escaped it.

And he's using a pretty broad brush to paint all 55 with. Many were opposed to slavery and from our nation's birth it was seen as a compromise to keep the nation together.

Some of those men lived among the native Americans while others suffered at the hands of those native Americans.

What they created was another point in the evolution of the free rights of man. They took the Magna Carta a step further and others built on what those 55 set into motion.

We've come a long way and we have a long way to still travel.

[NYDamien]

Man, if I could write as well as you, I wouldn't have to spend half my time explaining what I meant. This is a tough crowd in this room.
Hey, everyone, read Robert59.
Ditto

[Sons]

Robert59,

Excellent comment. But why say Founders were building on the "Magna Carta"?

That was a long time before 1776 and a lot came in between it and our Declaration.

[AnotherHuddy]

Although the founding fathers wanted to protect their riches, it is worth noting that (a) the situation at the time was no worse than democracy in Britain and other European countries and (b) they only expected the constitution to last about thirty years. That the concept of freedom democracy in America extended further and further down over the years is a result of the constitution's longevity.
Thanks to them, the Federalists were wiped off the map when they suggested splitting off New England, why South Carolina became a laughing stock after nullification, why countless presidents have been elected and defeated, and why conservatism is in serious shit.
~s~

[drblack]

Capitalism is supposed to be the form of Economics we use not the form our government takes.

[guajiro]

"Capitalism generally refers to an economic system in which the means of production are all or mostly privately[1][2] owned and operated for profit, and in which investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a market economy"
Richard refers to the 'economic system'. The 'system' is a set of laws designed to accomodate the status quo of capital remaining in private hands, unfortunately for us, it is in a very few hands. Less than .5% own the majority of the U.S. wealth and that is not a pre-requisite of capitalism. That puts us into a Fascist economic society.

[drblack]

One thing that can be said for George Washington's character is that when he was offered
the role of "King Of America" he refused and did not want to be president at first either.
I do hope the USA will finally live up to what it says in our Constitution.
The founders and Lincoln did some things pragmatica­lly.....th­ey wanted to have a unified country and made some ugly compromises.

[mpgarr]

"Consevative" legal scholars like Robert Bork always rant about the intent of "The Founding Fathers" and such and that we somehow got off track from that by granting too many rights--the "Penumbral Rights" that have evoled over time--his ilk want to do away with "rights" like the ability of a woman to decide to carry a baby or not--they want to set back the clock to zero on such things--but I never hear them say that we should also set back the clock to zero when it comes to "corporate rights" and court rulings that "money as equivalent to free speech"--

Those things were never "clearly enumerated" in the Constitution---at least in my copies of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

So Robert and the rest of your Federalist society compatriots--is what is good for the goose also good for the gander??

If we should go back and strip away a whole series of "rights" that individuals have come to expect--should we not also go and strip away the rights that huge corporations have usurped out of whole cloth??

At least there is the appearance that our Founding Fathers did want individuals to have some rights-but not a damn thing about a non-living entity like a corporation having even equal, let alone more rights than does the individual.

[guajiro]

Quite right. When workers die due to corporate activity you rarely see the jails filled with corporate CEOs. Case in point being the sago mine disaster and the Murray owned mine disaster in Utah. As a matter of fact, the FBI's Uniform crime reporting program, which determines the "Nation's Crime Index", excludes corporate persons, even when the corporations have been convicted of felonies. More money and property are stolen by or lost to corporate criminals than human criminals. In 1998, the FBI estimated robberies and burglaries at about $4 billion. Corporate crime is in the hundreds of billions, including:
Securities scams of around $15 billion in 1998
Car repair fraud around $40 billion 1998
Medical insurance/­HMO/hospit­al billings fraud of around $100-$400 billion yr 1998.
Our prisons should be overflowing with corporate criminals and should outnumber real persons but they aren't. The cost factor passed on to us through their products by the court costs/lawsuits is always cited by pro-business groups as a position morally superior to that of the justice/fa­irness/wel­l-being of the community and individual­s/families in general. But what about the cost in loss of income/life for families of the 56,000 people that died from work related diseases like black lung and asbestosis, facts unreported by the FBI in 1998? The damage and cost to our society is being hidden by our own government and is in fact being aided and abetted by our own government. Thom Hartmann's book " Unequal Protection" states it better than I ever could. It's a 'must read' for those who still wonder if we have become a Fascist society.

[horhay]

Yes, I agree, Hartmann's "Unequal Protection" is a very important book. Please read it.

As most(some?) Americans know, the Boston Tea Party was one of the first hostilities between England and the colonies leading up to the Revolutionary War. The Tea Act of 1773 was enacted to give the East India Company a monopolistic advantage on tea sold in the colonies, exempting the company from having to pay taxes on tea exported to America. This allowed the East India Company to undercut small business and local importers in the colonies. The fact that an offshore multi-national corporation could force its will upon the colonists was a rallying cry for the colonists to revolt against England. The Founding Fathers did not intend for corporations to have the same rights as individuals. They would be appalled at Exxon, Halliburton/KBR, Walmart, etc. greed and arrogance towards "We the People".

Ironically, it was when the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted(giving constitutional rights to the freed slaves), that corporations, through court decisions, gained their "personhood".

[Citizen54]

Read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." Might be a bit cynical for some, but he makes a well-documented case that this has always been a country of and for the rich.
(The rest of us get to live here and do the best we can.)

[backhandpath]

Like the State of Georgia?

[GayGrandpa]

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky.

Imagine all the people
Living for today ...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace ...

You, you may say I am a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one.

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world ...

You, you may say I am a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one.

[backhandpath]

Imagine Lennon was a wealthy marxist?

[AbstractImp]

Why Have a State?
Part Three

As we enter the age of the Continental States, we see the rights of citizens being abrogated all round the world, with strong men winning "elections" only to rob their people of their constitutional rights. You can see it with Musharraf in Paksitan or Putin in Russia; but you can thank the idiot here in our own oval office for lending the light and sanction of our formerly sacred institution of the presidency to the grand rollback of the Declaration of the Rights of Man that has been sweeping round the world, here at the start of what may be humanity's last millenium.

Why have a state? Think about it, my friends, before you manage to lose the one you have.....

"Winston Smith"

[backhandpath]

Whoa there, Imp!
That was pretty damn good!
Yowzah!

Dig the pen name.
{But everyone should know that Marlboro was an English brand:}

[AbstractImp]

Why Have a State?
Part Two

The imperial line goes from Scipio saving the Roman republic from the first barbrian threat only to return home and get his head cut off, while the socially-conscious Tiberius Gracchus gets stabbed right in the "senate" chambers, and on through Marius and Sulla rising to dictators in the face of crisis, only to get to Caesar crossing the Rubicon, after having killed all his rivals to a throne that hadn't even been created yet, and ending with the "pious" Augustus feigning denial of accepting the purple robes. Then Caligula can call himself a god and eat anything he likes. The sick results of all that are well known in the pages of Roman history.

But all those choices above are bankrupt. Every nation built upon any one of these systems has fallen. None of their leaders had an authority vested in the consent of their entire society. Each of these governments persecuted elements of their own society, excluded some from power, and held many down at the level of destitution if not starvation.

There really is no reason to have a state other than a social democracy. That is where all get together and compromise, for success or for survival.

If your elections are a glamor show for idiots, where a moron can steal the election, and then cavalierly lead your nation over the cliff into disaster, then you are not a free people.
(cont.)

[AbstractImp]

Why Have a State?
Part One

Why have a state? What is the reason for a society to incorporate itself into the monstrosity that has come to be known as the modern state?

Should members be expected to join a society that would then turn around and persecute them?

Should people stay in a society that will not allow them food and water?

Should people vote for leaders who let them drown in hurricanes and be eaten by alligators while those same leaders worry about dinner reservations?

Should people pledge allegiance to a government that wants to exclude them from the very "rights" they claim to defend?

Should people wave the flag for a government that will send them off to die in foreign lands for false causes?

Are these the reasons that people get together and found states?

I ask all this because I want to ask, why have any form of state other than a social democracy?

You have an aristocracy because you want success exlusive to the uppermost class.

You have a fascist dictatorship because you want unlimited power exclusive to a small minority.

You have a republic because you want decision rights exclusive to the landed minority.

You have communism because you want a command economy that defrauds all individuals of their identity.

You have feudalism because basically you have a broken society that cannot get much above a hydraulic autocracy.

Or you have autocracy because really you do not know what else to have, and so you just gather the army and every other greedy power group around one man and exclude, persecute, beat and execute everyone you think to be a threat. This is how imperialism gets started.
(cont.)

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Wow. That's a pretty harsh -- and terribly misrepresentative -- slam on George Washington.

Beyond his wealth (by marriage), Washington was chosen for his unrivaled integrity, unfailing faith in his fellow man, and unchallenged sense of fairness.

As to the formulation of the system Belzer lays at his feet, after the Revolutionary War and prior to the writing of the Constitution, Washington kept his distance from the Continental Congress that wrestled over the design the system, prefering to dine at home in Mount Vernon, after a day actively tending and crafting his estate, with whatever weary traveler might happen by and need a hot meal and a guest bed.

It is important to judge the man by the times he lived in, the callenges he rallied a nation to overcome, and the legacy he left.

That Washington's legacy is now threatened by crooks and cronies is the fault of a different George.