We're afraid of their "every man for himself" montra. No social programs, no social services, no social security, privatize everything.
It's "mantra" and what you're afraid of are the principles on which America is founded...
It's no secret that you're afraid of those principles... it's what makes your ideology such a bleeding MENACE.
You have NO RIGHT to the product of another man's labor... PERIOD. FOR ANY REASON.
Now you'll surely disagree... but here's what happens when you disagree... I ASK YOU TO TELL ME WHAT RIGHT YOU HAVE TO THE PRODUCT OF ANOTHER PERSON'S LABOR; and that is where you FAIL.
So tell me: WHAT RIGHT DO YOU HAVE TO SOMEONE ELSE'S LABOR?
The member will now NOT be able to provide us with a RIGHT which she has that would entitle her to the product of someone elses labor. And when she fails to do so, she concedes, if only by default, that her fears are unfounded pablum, which amounts to nothing but her having folded to the weakness of her own personal character.
A quarter of all the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had voted in their own state legislatures for laws that would have helped debtors and the poor and thus harmed the interests of the rich.
How Rich is Too Rich For Democracy?
So what did motivate the Framers of the Constitution?
Along with the answer to this question, we may also find the answer to another question historians have asked for two centuries: Why was the Constitutional Convention held in secret behind locked doors, and why did James Madison not publish his own notes of the Convention until 1840, just after the last of the other participants had died?
The reason, simply put, was that most of the wealthy men among the delegates were betraying the interests of their own economic class. They were voting for democracy instead of oligarchy.
As with any political body, a few of the delegates, "a dozen at the outside" according to McDonald, "clearly acted according to the dictates of their personal economic interests."
But there were larger issues at stake. The people who hammered out the Constitution had such a strong feeling of history and destiny that it at times overwhelmed them.
They realized that in the seven-thousand-year history of what they called civilization, only once before, in Athens - and then only for the brief flicker of a few centuries - had anything like a democracy ever been brought into existence and survived more than a generation.
Their writings show that they truly believed they were doing sacred work, something greater than themselves, their personal interests, or even the narrow interests of their wealthy constituents back in their home states.
They believed they were altering the course of world history, and that if they got it right we could truly create a better world.
Thus the secrecy, the locked doors, the intensity of the Constitutional Convention. And thus the willingness to set aside economic interest to produce a document - admittedly imperfect - that would establish an enduring beacon of liberty for the world.
As George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention, wrote to the nation on September 17, 1787 when "transmitting the Constitution" to the people of the new nation: "In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view, that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence."
He concluded with his "most ardent wish" was that the Constitution "may promote the lasting welfare of that country so dear to us all, and secure her freedom and happiness..."
Since the so-called "Reagan revolution" more than cut in half the income taxes the multimillionaires and billionaires among us pay, wealth has concentrated in America in ways not seen since the era of the Robber Barons, or, before that, pre-revolutionary colonial times. At the same time, poverty has exploded and the middle class is under economic siege.
And now come the oligarchs - the most wealthy and powerful families of America - lobbying Congress that they should retain their stupefying levels of wealth and the power it brings, generation after generation. They say that democracy doesn't require a strong middle class, and that Jefferson was wrong when he said that "overgrown wealth" could be "dangerous to the State." They say that a permanent, hereditary, aristocratically rich ruling class is actually a good thing for the stability of society.
While a $1.5 million trigger for the estate tax is arguably too low - particularly given the recent bubble in real estate prices - that doesn't invalidate the concept of a democracy defending itself against oligarchy. Set the trigger at 10 million, or fifty million. Make sure that family farms and small businesses are protected. And make sure that people who have worked hard and earned a lot of money can have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren who will live very comfortably.
But let's also make sure that we don't end up like so many Latin American countries, where a handful of super-rich families rule their nations, and democracy is more show than substance.
The Founders of our republic fought a war against an aristocratic, oligarchic nation, and were very clear that they didn't want America to ever degenerate into aristocracy, oligarchy, or feudalism/fascism. We must hold to their vision of an egalitarian, democratic republic.
