the 298,128,547 rest of us...

I was reading Bob Herbert's OpEd in today's NYT - Nightmare Before Christmas - and was struck by one line in his comments:

When such an overwhelming portion of the economic benefits are skewed toward a tiny portion of the population — as has happened in the U.S. over the past few decades — it’s impossible for the society as a whole not to suffer.

What instantly popped into my mind was the French Revolution. Visions of Versailles in 1788 flooded in. The opulence, of course, but more important the self-imposed isolation of the court from the overwhelming struggles of the people all around them.

Louis, Marie Antoinette and their sycophants saw none of the troubles and hassles of the French people in providing the gold and silver around their advantaged necks, the fine wine and cognacs in their opulent crystal, or the silks and brocades on their portly bodies. It was not a prerogative that the common, coarse & vulgar men, women and children who toiled and drudged to give the royals their rewards were allowed. Louis' retinue considered it their right and due, a privilege that the establishment believed belonged to them alone by mere station of birth, religious justification, or favor of a patron.

I am reminded of a passage from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.

One sort have been they, that have nourished, and ordered them, according to their own invention. The other have done it, by God's commandment, and directon: but both sorts have done it, with a purpose to make those men that relied on them, the more apt to obedience, laws, peace, charity and civil society. So that the religion of the former sort, is a part of human politics; and teacheth part of the duty which earthly kings require their subjects. And the religion of the latter sort is divine politics; and containeth precepts to those that have yielded themselves subjects to the kingdom of God. Of the former sort, were all the founders of commonwealths, and the lawgivers of the Gentiles: of the latter sort, were Abraham, Moses and our blessed Saviour; by whom have been derived unto us the laws of the kingdom of God.

We no longer have royalty based on blood or religious divine right, at least not on paper. Thomas Jefferson and others are responsible for that. However, it has been substituted by an aristocracy derived from money and the power that comes with it. Something that neither Jefferson, Adams, Madison nor the others could have foreseen.

As Bob Herbert points out in the OpEd: According to the Congressional Budget Office, the after-tax income of the top 1 percent rose 228 percent from 1979 through 2005. While the rest of the population has tended to tread water economically, or drown.

There are a number of principles on which the United States were founded. the foremost can be found,

In the phrase "We, the people... " our Constitution expressed the revolutionary idea that "the people" could set up "governments of their own, under their own authority." John Gardner

George Washington, Thomas Paine, and the others fought a revolution to destroy the notion that any one person or group of people had sway over the lives of others.

Abraham Lincoln fought a civil war to keep this dream alive. He defined the construction of our nation in 18 succinct words that identify the underlying source to the essence behind this country's creation:

...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

The United States has long been referred to as the "Great Experiment" in democracy. The powers of the three branches, Judicial, Executive and Legislative, are given to them by the contract we know as the Constitution. There are limits built into it on purpose. The justification behind this charge was to restrict any one power, person or group becoming the sole proprietor of authority. For the last 50 years we have seen this principle eroding. The last seven years have been the worst.

The Bush/Cheney administration has taken action after action to bolster and increase the stature or the new aristocracy providing opportunity after opportunity to facilitate the increases for the top 1% of Americans.

at what expense?

the 298,128,547* rest of us...


[*the 2007 population of the U.S. after the 1% has been subtracted.]