America is stalled in its move towards democracy

Here is what John Hank Edison says:

This Fourth of July, let's give America the birthday present she cannot do without. Let's give the people back their Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence sets forth a worldview that, back in the 18th century, served as the foundation of our new nation. This foundation was composed of the principle of human equality and the rights of self-determination implied by the famous phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Back then, this foundation was sufficient to support the society we hoped to build, one free of the economic monopolies, religious authoritarianism and military brutality embodied, respectively, in the English nobility, the Church of England and England's Redcoat soldiers. As large as these forces loomed over the colonists in the New World, these were forces still dwarfed by the Atlantic Ocean, the American wilderness and the sheer number of people they aimed to dominate.

In a day of bayonets, wooden hulls and musket balls, mere consciousness of the principle of human equality was enough to give the people confidence in their ability to rewrite the social contract, even if it had to be written in their own blood. "Give me liberty or give me death," Patrick Henry cried. In his day, he could calculate the odds of success as reasonable against an enemy that was still on a human scale. He could look his enemy in the eye and say to King George with confidence, our equality is self-evident.

When we won our independence, we dismantled all the power platforms setting some human beings above others. Against the concentration of wealth and power of the classist aristocracy, we built the one-person, one-vote principle. Against the psychological oppression of religious authoritarianism, we constructed the doctrine of separation of church and state. And against the physical domination of mercenary armies, we instituted civilian control of the military.

But then we lost our way.

Think about that. After the slaves were freed and the power of the wealthy plantation owners who had dominated much of America's politics were displaced, the newly developed large corporations (especially the railroads and the banks) marshaled their forces and came back to again dominate American politics. The big banks and corporations quickly took over the Republican Party and effectively dominated America through successive "Financial Panics" that they caused until the massive failure that we now call the "Great Depression occurred.

The period of the 1930's showed a massive uprising of the American people fighting to defend themselves from the corporate and banking would be masters, and they took over the nation. They held it through WW II and the Korean War, and then in the '50's the banks and corporations came back. Their abortive effort to regain control though control of the House of Representative in 1952 was reversed in 1954 after the House performed fully as badly as the Gingrich-dominated House has. Only it was a time of people power and they were quickly replaced. Wikipedia has a pretty good description of what happened in the Republican Party when they chose a Presidential nominee:

The fight for the Republican nomination was between General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who became the candidate of the party's moderate eastern establishment; Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the longtime leader of the GOP's conservative wing; and Governor Earl Warren of California, who appealed to Western delegates and independent voters.

The moderate Eastern Republicans were led by New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the party's presidential nominee in 1944 and 1948. The moderates tended to be interventionists who felt that America needed to fight the Cold War overseas and resist Soviet aggression in Europe and Asia; they were also willing to accept most aspects of the social welfare state created by the New Deal in the 1930s. The moderates were also concerned with ending the GOP's losing streak in presidential elections; they felt that the personally popular Eisenhower had the best chance of beating the Democrats.

So even within the Republican Party the power of the people represented by the northeast moderates dominated the choice of Presidential candidate in 1952. But Ike had to choose Nixon as his Vice President to mollify the Conservatives, much as in 2008 McCain had to choose Sarah Palin. But the expanding Cold War gave force to the militarily expansionist elements that were often represented by the John Birch Society. The closeness of the 1960 Presidential election in part represented the growing power of the Corporate and the Cold War Hawk Republicans. Then the Goldwater takeover of the Republican Party in 1964 represented the victory of the Western libertarian Republicans in a party dispirited and disorganized by the 1960 loss of the Presidency and the general confusion caused by assassination of Kennedy. Goldwater's ideological-based disdain for the Republican moderates doomed his election attempt even before it started.

The Vietnam War, greatly expanded by LBJ to mollify the conservatives so they they would not be able to prevent his passage of Medicare, crippled the American populist movement. The nation coalesced around the hardliners and the military as it always has in time of war, while the Progressives of both parties recognized both the idiocy and the futility of the war in Vietnam. The Banks and corporations went with the Military-Industrial Complex for a variety of reasons. The success of the Civil Rights Movement was cemented institutionally by the Civil Rights act, though, so the weakness of the Progressives was not clear. In the meantime, Medicare removed one of the major problems the Progressives worked to correct. [Before Medicare, when a person reached age 65 the health insurers canceled any existing health insurance. There was none sold to those over age 65, including group policies. All retirees were on their own medically after age 65. LBJ had removed this irritant to the middle class with Medicare.]

Nixon became President in 1968 because of the Vietnam War. Nixon was a brilliant but very conflicted man. He was a foreign policy hardliner, but he tried to stop inflation with a price freeze (which didn't work) but which was anathema to the free market Conservatives. It was his personal insecurities and paranoia that drove him to his criminal actions, and as a Conservative he was not restrained by the Rule of Law at all. The Progressive reaction in both Congress and in the media caused him to have to resign or be impeached. Ford had no time in office and no national power base. Carter was elected as a reaction to Nixon but if he ever had a clue regarding the nature of the Progressive American public he never displayed it. Worse, he disdained politics and the political parties, doing nothing to build the Democrats to deal with the Republican-based Corporatocracy. In the meantime the corporation Republicans were building for their comeback with Reagan as the figurehead. Reagan's victory in 1980 (with the assistance of the Iranian Revolutionaries) was a foregone conclusion.

You can tell that the corporations were fighting to come back because since 1970 labor overall has not shared in the profits resulting from the increases in industrial productivity. Those profits, and they are substantial) have all almost totally gone to the wealthiest families in America, and they love it. Beginning when Reagan was in office the cnservatives started eliminating the power of unions to set wages and they started to reduce taxes on the income of the most wealthy. The inheritance tax is a pet peeve of the wealthy families that dominate the conservative movement.

Since 1970 total US consumption has increased because the size of the working population grew and because consumers were extended new forms of credit to make purchasing goods and services easier. This accounts for the rapid expansion of credit cards and their distribution to more and more uncredit-worthy customers, followed by the expansion of equity loans on home mortgages also expanded the consumer purchases. Then when the Asian Credit Crisis threatened the American Economy, the Ayn Randian Libertarian Alan Greenspan started rapidly expanding the money supply to lower interest rates and keep the economy going. Greenspan's refusal to clamp down on mortgage lending practices was another part of this expansion of money to the consumers, just to keep the economy going and avoid Recession. He really believed without evidence that the Mortgage Banks would not intentionally make bad mortgage loans, but the system paid big immediate payments to such loans. They did it without consideration of what happened later to them. Housing, of course, grew to become fully half of Gross Domestic Product (GDP.)

The other thing that happened during the Reagan Regime was that Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition of Evangelical Fundamentalists allied with the Conservative corporate and foreign policy hardliner Republican politicians. This gave the Republicans the foot soldiers to win elections in areas that were not dominated by military and government contracts and wealthy bankers. The corporations and bankers provided the funds to the Republican conservatives needed to win the elections. It was a match made in heaven, if all that matters is winning.

Except, that as part of the deal the Republican Party had to buy the Social Republican issues and implement them. This has been done primarily by packing the federal judiciary with social conservative judges. Other than that, failure to enforce federal laws protecting abortion providers and the slow advance of legal restrictions on abortion, the social right wing has got very little out of the deal. The moderate Republicans who objected to the social conservative issues were driven out of office over time.

The dissatisfaction of the social conservatives themselves was getting clear by the late 1990's (Ralph Reed left the Christian Coalition), until Karl Rove pushed the born-again George W. Bush into the nomination for President in 2000. He had the money from his father's connections and the approval of the social conservatives. The social conservatives and the social conservative-packed Supreme Court gave Bush the election in 2000, but the social conservatives have really gotten very little out of the deal. They are currently abandoning politics as had been characteristic for them before the growth of the Christian Coalition.

Now America has stalled in economic growth, found two wars to fight (one unnecessary) and the threat of the Depression has activated the mass of the population again to fight the Corporatocracy that has brought us all these disasters. Those are the forces that elected Barack Obama.

But they are difficult to keep mobilized without an immediate threat to bring them out and unify them. Obama's efforts to slow and stall the economic dive into deep Depression has removed most of the immediate threat. The mass population is beginning to drop away. Unfortunately, the delay on the dive into Depression has not been accompanied by the necessary structural reforms that would prevent the Depression from happening. The corporatocracy is fighting those reforms like trapped weasels, and being successful at it. The renewal of the dive into Depression becomes more likely every day those financial reforms are not enacted.

Without those reforms the march economically downward into Depression will be soon coming back. The current apparent floor under the financial collapse is based entirely on the government stimuli. The best that can be said about the indications of an economic "bottom" is that it is just that it represents where the economy is currently able to operate. There is little indication that any economic-based recovery is occurring so far. So without the government stimuli the economy is headed further down the tubes. But this time, on Barack Obama's watch, so that he gets the blame. The Republicans are actively opposing all actions that might prevent this in hopes that the march to Depression will resume and that Obama can be blamed.

That's the context within which Obama has presented this challenge to the American people in today's Saturday U-Tube address. If the mass support Obama got that elected him President is not followed by support is the actions Obama has to take to restructure the economy we are in a world of crap. Here's Obama's challenge.



Are you ready to take up the challenge? Your decision will make or break America.