Written by David B. Brooks   

Democracy was maybe best described as: of, by and for the people. But in the late 19th century businesses and corporation usurped individual humanity by forcing the supreme court to award them with humanity without responsibility. Since then businesses and corporations have been at war with individual Americans trying to reduce us all to less than slaves. Slave owners were at least responsible for the food and housing of their slaves, but businesses and corporations want the American people to serve them as slaves without a viable means of support; corporations are not responsible for anything but making their owners wealthy.

Very very few American citizens would be against government, as the Tea Party is if it were a government of, by, and for the people. Libertarianism, the polite way of putting anarchy, is actually a response to a government that has been taken over by business and corporate bribery and other seditious purposes wealth has of defending and advancing its grandiose greed and lust for power. So now businesses and corporations finance a so-called populist movement to make a political party their own fifth column and subversion of democracy.

Yes there is a popular battle between classic progressives and conservatives, but the latter has recently become self destructively misguided by the enemy of the people, businesses and corporations. Considering it has been within my lifetime that America has survived a great depression caused by the malfeasance of businesses and corporations. We began to fair better in the year of my birth and the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the best years of growth and prosperity for everyone followed the Second World War thanks to massive government support almost everyone enjoyed, including businesses and corporations.

But by 1980 the powers of democratic destruction took over and government was named the cause of all evil, and its destruction was undertaken. Sadly that only took 20 years and in the new century the seeds of dissolution and implosion have taken root.

Today there is serious talk of a constitutional convention, and in some circles consideration of secession. But in a divided, polarized population the possibilities of coming together on any agreement on improving our basis of governance seems unlikely, and I say that because most Americans do not know themselves, each other, or the society we all live in. Most of us work for companies and corporations which are universally authoritarian dictatorships. The majority of Americans belong to churches most of which are authoritarian dictatorships. And today the traditional family is still revered and what is practiced is paternalistic, authoritarian dictatorship in most of those families. In the most conservative states the divorce rate is the highest in the nation; and in the rest of the country the percentage of people living together who are not married increases rapidly each census. We are a nation of people divided against ourselves, in large part because don’t know or understand who we are or what we are about: it is surely not about the practice of democratic principles.

Whether we do it intentionally through elections or unintentionally by inaction, America is on a path of self destruction. It is not on the path the Framers of the Constitution hoped for. I find it interesting that the people who discredit our democracy the most, who discredit the government for helping people, are very likely from areas that were most affected by the first program of Federal assistance led by ideas of Thomas Jefferson. He thought Americans who had enough land to farm would become self reliant independent citizens. So that idea led to the Homestead Act, which over many years provided land to individuals at no cost other than making the land productive and able to support a family. How many in America have fore-bearers who benefitted because of the thousands of farms the Homestead Act provided?