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Chapter 35
Beyond Plutocracy
To date, we have not managed to transcend dominance by the few
and our authoritarian, plutocratic forms of government. But someday we will. If
we do not self-destruct first, someday we will transcend our current state. Rule
by dominance, oppression, and exploitation is inherently unstable. It carries
within itself the seed of its own destruction. We possess an inborn need to be
free, and we never cease trying to overthrow injustice and physical and economic
imprisonment. We dream of and work toward a more just, happy, and peaceful way
of being in this world. We do not mouth empty words but truly seek
kinder, gentler nations and a new world order.
Our inability to date to correct the distributions of power
and wealth in America (and elsewhere) which so overwhelmingly favor the few may
be taken as a measure of the ignorance, division, and apathy within the many,
and, indeed, among all of us. Those among us who hate and feud with each other—those
within various racial and ethnic groups; the political and religious liberals,
conservatives, and fundamentalists; those of differing genders, orientations,
and lifestyles; the rich and the poor; etc.—must loosen their fanatical grips
on their cherished divisions, hatreds, and fears.
To counteract the many forces pulling us apart, we desperately
need a force which brings us together and sets our nation aright. We must come
together at least to an extent sufficient to create and participate effectively
in a true democratic process within a demos. The only way that we may fulfill
our promise and reach and sustain our fullest potential as a people and a nation
is to create within our government at long last the true democracy and the just
balance of power that we now only profess. We will continue to suffer our
current purgatory or worse so long as we fail to do this.
A nation divided cannot stand. A momentary, patriotic upsurge
in the face of crisis and war should not be confused with the ongoing love and
pulling together that would come from true democracy and justice and the
political and economic inclusion of everyone. Even as we reach our pinnacle of
wealth and power, we suffer severe cracks in our foundation and the beginning of
decline. Our very freedom is in decline. We are a nation of the blind leading
the blind, and we have, indeed, fallen into a ditch. We are at odds both with
each other and with the larger world community. Polarization, hatred, rage, and
discord abound. Our nation is being torn asunder. America must become just, or
it will perish.
A world divided cannot stand. Not just an ideal, we must someday become a community of just nations … or
we will die. Meanwhile,
we live in a purgatory of physical and economic warfare and terrorism, and we
remain a crippled caricature of our fullest human potential.
It has the means, and, were it not so blind, America could
become the world’s first truly just nation and a light unto the world. But, as
we are now, we can only show that part of the world which needs and accepts our
guidance the way from hell to purgatory. We cannot show the way to heaven for we
have not yet found our own way. We have mastered the creation and accumulation
of wealth, but we are spiritually bankrupt. Inclusion, justice, and brotherhood
remain but dreams. In truth, in our current state, we merely attempt to impress
plutocracy the American way onto a reluctant world. We cannot serve as a model
of true democracy and just governance for the world. True democracy and just
governance are lights we do not yet possess.
Article V of the Constitution of the United States of America
gives us the means to alter the constitution, but our right to amend it
and even to tear it up and create a whole new constitution and government comes
from an entirely more fundamental source. That source was beautifully proclaimed
and appealed to in The Declaration of Independence which was signed by some of
the same people who created and signed the constitution:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to
alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will
dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are
more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves
by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design
to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty,
to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future
security.
Well said, don’t you think? We have unalienable
rights;
governments are instituted to secure these rights; governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed; and when a government becomes
destructive of these ends it is the right and the duty of the people to
alter or abolish it and institute a new government, laying its foundation on
such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
It is ironic that the very people who embraced such weighty
ideas and lofty ideals created a plutocratic form of government which prevented
most of the people living under it from directly participating in any of the
decisions which determine the conditions under which they must live. It is the
height of duplicity for them to have claimed that their government derived its powers
from the consent of the governed when they deliberately excluded the vast
majority of the population from even participating in the government that they
created.
Given the opportunity that most people living in those times were
denied and most people living in our times are still denied, we would not have
then and certainly should not now give our consent to their self-serving, wealth-serving
government! “We the people” have suffered enough
under their unjust government!
The wrongs that they did in their time we can and should
set right in our time to achieve at
long last a proper balance of real power and a fair and just measure of “life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for everyone. It is time and over time to move beyond
their plutocracy and create a more perfect union.
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© Copyright 2001 Roger D Rothenberger
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