Monday, November 22, 2010

Harmful Developments Not Covered by the Constitution

One of the inspiring thoughts that drove the framers of America was that after thousands of years of governments by despotism the United States experience would prove that free men can govern themselves. They carefully crafted the Constitution to guide America through a life expectancy of many years. It was hoped that with continual improvements made through a careful process the vision would be protected and passed forward from generation to generation.

While the Constitution was being drafted neither political parties or corporations were of major significance. They therefore were not mentioned in the Constitution.

We were, however, given vocal warnings against a future controlled by political parties from many of the Founding Fathers. Washington even included a warning in his farewell address. Jefferson also warned against corporations assuming power (see earlier post “Founding Father Warnings on Current Issues, Oct 3, 2010).

Each generation of Americans has been a critical link in preserving the vision of a government that is controlled by its free citizens. Although some may disagree, I believe that in general we have performed well in that part of the vision protected explicitly by the Constitution.

But time has taken its toll in areas not specifically covered by the Constitution. We have allowed a two party system to gain control of our electoral process. In addition we have given corporations many of the rights previously reserved for citizens. This has allowed them to use their vast financial resources to influence our political processes. Both of these events have reduced the ability of the citizens to govern themselves.

The Democrats claim roots back to early post revolutionary war, while the Republicans emerged just prior to the civil war. Since then, although competitors for specific offices, they have jointly beaten down any attempts for a third party. This has greatly limited the choices in candidates and policies available to the citizens.

The two parties now essentially limit our choice of candidates to those from either one party or the other, meaning either a far left or far right agenda. There is no moderate agenda available. Further, as predicted by many of the Founding Fathers the party members have developed stronger loyalties to their party than to the country. Thus each party spends most of its energy sabotaging the other. Finally, the two parties have legislated themselves elite rights and privileges to a level that would really have distressed the Founders. The record of the Congress has been so bad that a recent Gallop poll showed that only 17% of the voters approve of its performance.

The direct solution rests on the efforts of the citizens to take advantage of the ability given by the Constitution to replace a large portion of the Congress. There is some evidence from the mid-term elections that this is starting to happen.

The solution to excessive corporate political power is more difficult. Corporations have become irreplaceable engines in the global economic system. The legal shield that allows investors in a corporation to only risk their corporate investment as opposed to risking their total owned assets is the most powerful incentive for capitalization of companies. An overwhelming portion of the countries economic and technical strength rests with corporations.

In their formative years corporations were engines of commerce only and forbidden to participate in politics. Over the last 100 years this has evolved to the point that corporations now enjoy rights previously reserved for citizens. This has been generally affirmed by the courts. Vast sums are now spent by corporations and their organizations to influence legislatures. The critical task ahead is to formulate an industrial program which strengthens American corporations competing in the global economy while preventing them from acquiring such strength in the political process that they harm the creativity or well being of the citizens.

These are both fixable issues. They do require an aware and determined citizenry to keep the parties and the corporations from taking over ownership of our vision.

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