Posted by PFANS on February 07, 2008 at 10:20:22:
From: PFANS
To: Loudobbs@ CNN.com
Sent: 2/7/2008 11:00:58 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
Subj: American Democracy... Second Coming
Lou..., A topic for a future show.....
It is apparent that this system we still use is no longer manageable by either the political state, nor by its corporate "elite," as you put it, but "Capitalist class..." is the more appropriate designation..., and YOU know it..., but you can't get into this "class" stuff without being booted off the airwaves..
.The sharply growing intensities of the domestic and global commodity markets has produced chaotic social conditions throughout own society as well as
in others. The Immigration problems, and other severe economic disparities we perennially endure will be with us so long as this present system remains in place.
Unless WE have alternative systemic choices which can offer new ways to maintain a peaceful, prosperous (for all) society, your calls for an "Independent" vote can only produce more of the same. Changing political faces has NEVER altered the negative directions of this present economic system. Our U.S. history, particularly a reading of our LABOR history (Your Middle Class?) documents how capitalism's basic mechanics prevent societal stability.
It is plain to see we need a NEW way for self government in our communities, and in our work places! If you believe in democracy, you will give this concept your serious consideration.
The reason WE are in OUR domestic and global mess is due to the salient fact that We, the People, have NO real, democratic input into government and economic policies.., a condition that you, Lou, are always talking about..,which is why OUR need for social ownership is of paramount importance. We need a national public dialogue, which YOU can help bring about.
A studied reflection on what is at the core of the social turmoil we call poverty, crime, racism, the environmental question, and the vicious Congressional divisions in government, can be narrowed to one, and only one cause ..., the structure and misuse of our economy.
It should be clear to everyone by now that the present system has failed to enable us to sustain a consistently prosperous, peaceful and harmonious society. In fact, the opposite is true.
Lou, think about it. Many of us have been pauperized. We fight among ourselves and with other countries. We have little or no real decision-making role in a government which has become an open political battlefield for the economic system’s most powerful corporations and their chief beneficiaries to the exclusion of our everyday living needs.
Right now we are in the midst of a societal and global holocaust. As a people we have been led into wars abroad, and now the wars have been visited upon us by people most of us have never met, and have never personally harmed or injured in any way.
To passively witness our own destruction, and to deny the real reasons why it is happening, is to condemn ourselves and future generations to a drab, worry-laden, welfare ridden future of physical and mental impoverishment.
We can do something about it. Let's consider the rationale for social ownership of our nation's necessary industries... We already have the TVA as a precedent for government ownership of a necessary national resource. But the system I will describe is more than what entailed the TVA experience. The social ownership I project is not one of a bureaucratic government. It is guided by the principle: People in their civic government, and in their work places, have a direct voice and vote in all matters that affect their lives..., and the "legal" decision making empowerment to have their needs and wants fulfilled by a democratically operated, cooperative coordination of all of our society's needed industries and services.
Tall order? Of course. Possible? Yes, so long as we still have the US Constitution as our guiding instrument for social change... Last time I heard, we still do.
We cannot be resistant to any new social plan that we can implement to replace this present one, which has been breaking down periodically and dramatically ever since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. We need a NEW SYSTEM which We, the People, the citizen majority, can democratically use to serve our societal, as well as our individual needs and wants.
Social ownership of our needed industries and services is the most logical answer.
Our emphasis must be on a NEW SYSTEM … I am not talking about so-called “Communism,” or the popular understandings of “socialism.”
This is not an advocacy of any form of STATE ownership of our national industrial assets in which the administration and operation of our work places is governed from the top down.
In the realm of ethical morality, social ownership of our industrial complex, social ownership is natural and just.
Social ownership is natural because We, the People, operate our socially-operated industrial tools, the foremost instruments we, as a cooperative society, now have for societal survival in the modern industrial world. By virtue of their critical need by the whole society, it becomes imperative that these are not misused for narrow, short term private gain by any minority, as is now the reality.
Social ownership is just because it is compatible with the fair, universally-accepted axiom: that is, the product belongs to those who make it. Since the majority of society’s citizenry is of our working class, and since it is our class which has created, and operates the industrial wheels of necessary social production to provide the goods and services required for us to function as we do, it becomes a simple matter of elementary justice that our industrial tools be owned, controlled, administered and democratically operated by those who work them.
There is the Legal Question. Our Constitution, the law of our land, makes it possible to have a New System.
Article V, the Amendment Clause, enables us to change the system through legislation, the legal and peaceful ballot way. The legal and moral basis for using a new system, for a fundamental change, is found in our early American traditions.
Thomas Jefferson, author of our Declaration of Independence, told us that his writings were for the people of that time, and that conditions would change as to the ways future generations would order and govern themselves. He declared that WE mustn’t look upon what his generation did as being written in stone, never to be changed, which is why the Amendment Clause, Article V, was included in the Constitution.
On the folly of keeping the Constitution exactly as was originally written, Jefferson wrote:
We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him as a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their …ancestors.”
George Washington added:
The basis of our political system is the right of the people to alter the constitutions of government.”
Abraham Lincoln agreed:
Any people living anywhere being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most sacred right -- a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”
Lincoln went a step further:
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their CONSTITUTIONAL right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”
Perhaps James Madison, The Father of the Constitution, came closest to understanding how our present form of government, as well as the economy, established over 200 years ago, would not be desirable for future generations when he declared that the time would come when:
"Wealth will be concentrated in the hands of the few,” and that it would be necessary to “…readjust the laws of the nation to changed conditions.”
That time I believe is NOW. . We need new laws…in a new system.
Lou, are you still there? I would be agreeable to be a guest on your show to discuss this concept