John McCain said in the last debate, “The whole premise behind Sen. Obama’s plans are class warfare – let’s spread the wealth around.”
Unfortunately not only does he share George Bush’s economic philosophy, he even shares Bush’s tortured syntax. What McCain and the whole right wing leadership refuse to acknowledge are the facts pointed out by Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world. “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Democracy is a philosophy of government, one in which the will of the majority is meant to determine policy. By its nature it is meant to serve the common good. Capitalism and socialism are economic systems, neither of which is specified by the constitution. The right has continually tried to equate democracy with capitalism – an assertion both historically and, by definition, inaccurate. Whenever this is pointed out, the right hollers “class war” and “socialism,” categorizing people who suffer from the right’s excesses as malcontents and wild-eyed radicals whose ideas are not worthy of discussion.
The will of the fewBeginning with the election of Ronald Reagan we have been in a period in which the goals of those on the right have been unleashed on the rest of us. Did they create a free market? No, they created a market that redistributed wealth to the rich.
This historic battle in politics is about which economic system achieves our common good and protects individual rights. Capitalism is an economic system that benefits those with individual power and influence. The nature of those who succeed in such a system pushes them to seek even more. The result is a neutered government and undue influence of the rich and powerful. The common good has been relegated to the back seat, looking out the window, while the hyper-capitalist globalizers have taken sole control of the wheel.
We can’t come to the end of the Bush administration’s ride soon enough. If we are not to descend into the dark ages their ridiculous supply-side economics, neo-con foreign policy and insane willingness to destroy the planet’s viability in the interest of oil companies must come to an end. The cavalier attitude towards the constitution and its amendments, criminal politicization of regulatory agencies and the justice department, and creation of the biggest internal security department since those of Stalinist Russia and Mao’s China must end. People tend to forget civilization once went backwards for almost 1000 years. It can again.
http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=1139&print=1This is a nice article that lays out a sweeping analysis of the class warfare problem in the USA. It's to the point and fairly accurate.
