Daring Depravity

Apparently, when someone takes a bazillion dollars to the casino, bets it on green double zero on the roulette wheel, and then loses it all, the best way to prevent that from happening again is not to give them back their bazillion dollars, and tell them not to do it again.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100131/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bailout_watchdog

An interesting discussion on NPR yesterday discussed the modern vision of where Bipartisanship in the Congress comes from.  Richard Nixon, in 1972 used the term 4 times, imploring Congress to Pass his agenda.  He was reaching out to Pro-War, anti Civil Rights Democrats who had no place in their Party because of their views.

So, when President Obama claims he is reaching out for Bipartisanship, is he asking for Moderate Republicans, who are pro Health Care to side with the Democrats in Passing his agenda?  Or, is what he is really saying is that he wants to recruit Republicans to side with moderate Democrats to pass reductions to “entitlement” programs, such as Social Security and Medicare?

This morning, on Meet The Press, House Minority Leader John Boehner stated that the Republicans had been perfectly willing to work with the President on issues that Republicans like: Expanding the Pentagon, Nuclear Power, and more troops to the War in Afghanistan.

So, basically, Bipartisanship is excellent, as long as you agree with the Republicans, and advance their agenda.  If you try to pass anything mildly Progressive, you are radically remaking society, turning over power to the Government, etc and must be stopped.  If you want more war, a bigger pentagon, and other terrible things for our society, then can’t we all just get a long?

I have been reading blogs on the internet for some time now, and I like a lot of them, however, I always felt like something was missing.  While many blogs are good a reporting news that is not covered very well or at all in the mainstream media, I felt like all of the “top” blogs lacked a systemic analysis – an analysis of why we are in the position that we are in now, and why we have such a lack of democracy in out society.  So, I decided that I was going to throw my hat in the ring, and this blog was born.

We have a problem in our society; there is a significant democracy deficit that extends into all facets of our society.  On one hand our government is increasingly less democratic as more and more corporate money and control extends into it.  On the other hand there is private power that is totally unaccountable to the people that it affects.  Corporations create a system of Industrial Feudalism, in which we are totally dependant on what they provide for us, and we have no meaningful way to participate in the decision making systems that direct them.  We can’t elect our bosses, and we can’t even participate in a meaningful way in our jobs.

At the time of the founding of the country, the main framer of the constitution, James Madison, made many arguments to limit the amount of democracy that would exist in our society.  He made the argument that if the majority of the population was allowed to make their own decisions, then they would vote in their interests, and against the interest of the landed minority, which he called the minority of the opulent.

His claim was that it was the place of government to protect the minority of the opulent from the will of the majority, a majority that he often referred to as the beast who needed to be kept in its cage.  He believed strongly that those in power would act as enlightened gentleman, and would rule the country in the interest of the country as a whole.

A few decades after the founding of the republic, however, Madison noticed that something was wrong.  He, as well as several others such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine spoke out against what they saw happening in the country: the encroachment of business into government.  The capitalist revolution was underway in America, and the ruling class went from Madison’s enlightened vision of ruling in the best interest of all to the capitalist doctrine of all for me, and none for anyone else.

It was during this time that Madison began to speak out against the emerging patterns that he saw, calling the capitalist doctrine the “Daring Depravity of our times”.  He warned that government would become “become the praetorian band of the government-at once its tools and its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, and overawing it by clamors and combinations.”

Check out this link for an essay by Noam Chomsky entitled Renewing Tom Pain’s Challenge, which lays out the argument better than I can.

Today we stand at the logical conclusion of what was seen in that time period.  More and more, unaccountable and undemocratic private power is taking more and more control of our society.  Corporations, have been given the rights of persons and the rights of property, using either one when it is to their benefit.

We stand in a crisis of Democracy, one that many of the founding fathers realized was coming in the early 1800’s.  This is the inspiration for this blog.  It is time for a better criticism of the system that we live in, and a clear voice that is pushing for increasing democracy in our everyday lives.  Liberal solutions are not enough.  It is not enough to continue down the path that we are on now but just at a slower pace, or with slightly different leaders at the front of it.

Instead we must try to democratize our everyday lives, and also build a greater understanding of the systems that we live under.  We must fight the dual battle against consolidated private power as well as a government that is more and more the Praetorian Band of that private power.

We must organize and fight against the Daring Depravity of our times.

This Blog started in 2006, however, due to some internet hosting issues, it had to be restarted now.  Some of the archives are available, but there are no plans to re integrate them into the current site.  Its good to be back though!