In her March 9 substack post Heather Cox Richardson discussed the Declaration of Independence, particularly the following passage
We hold these truths
to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed,…
HCR (as she is
affectionately known by her followers) pointed out two important ideas in this
passage. First that all men are born equal. Second that governments derive
their power from the consent of the governed.
At three points in
American history these ideas were seriously questioned. The first was in the 1850s
when wealthy slave owners in the South repudiated the notion that all men are
equal. They also rejected the idea that the governments required the consent of
the governed. HCR quoted George Fitzhugh of Virginia who wrote in 1857 “All
governments must originate in force, and be continued by force…” The 1,200
men who could vote in his county “never asked and never intend to ask the
consent of the 16,800 [other men who lived in the county] whom we govern.” The intent of these men to force slavery on
the entire country and remove the “ridiculously absurd dogma … of Mr.
Jefferson” from the founding documents, led to the American Civil War.
Northerners, seeing the threat to their country, rose up under Lincoln to
defeat slavery, at great cost.
President Lincoln, in what
became known as the Gettysburg Address, added another idea about the American
government, charging the people to preserve from perishing from the earth “government
of the people, by the people, and for the people”.
The second time these ideas
were in question was in the 1890s during what is referred to as the “Gilded
Age” of industrialization. A few men such as Andrew Carnegie accumulated great
wealth and power. They came to think that they were somehow superior to the
laborers, and therefore deserved their wealth and power. They resisted any
effort to redistribute their wealth with those less fortunate, calling anyone
promoting such ideas Socialists and Anarchists and, after the 1917 Russian
Revolution, “Bolsheviks” and Communists.
It took the Great Depression
of the 1930s to motivate the American people to rise up and take back their
country from the industrialist oligarchs. The two Roosevelt presidents were key
in turning the country back to social democracy. This created what became the
largest and most robust middle class in human history.
The third era of opposition
to equality began with Reagan and culminated in the chaotic destruction of the
government under Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
The current Republican Party, the party of Trump and MAGA, do
not believe in helping the needy. They consider them to be parasites feeding on
the successful wealthy people who are the real creators of wealth. Republican
Representative Paul Ryan in 2010 called them “takers not makers”. Mitt
Romney called them “moochers … who believe they are entitled to health care,
to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
Elon Musk has started to refer to people he doesn’t like as an
NPC. This is a gaming term for Non-Playing Character, a computer-generated
player who follows a script and can’t think for himself. In other words, not a “real”
person. The implication is that because he, Musk, is making big decisions that
affect thousands of government employees, that he is a real player and they aren’t
worthy of consideration. So, to him it’s a joke to use a chainsaw metaphor for
ruining peoples’ lives, not unlike burning ants with a magnifying glass.
As an aside here, Ezra Klein writing in the NYT on February 16,
pointed out that NPC is a fitting description of Republican Senators and
Congressmen who have been given a script to follow and aren’t allowed to think or
act for themselves.
As has become painfully obvious, Musk and the DOGE gang are
not at all interested in efficiency or eliminating corruption. If they were
interested in the former, they would be working with the Inspectors General
instead of firing them, and they would have forensic accountants on the team,
not just software geeks. As to corruption, the Trump regime is the most
blatantly corrupt administration in American history. Their goal is to break
the government so they can pick up the pieces and line their pockets. They are
systematically destroying any program that helps the common people. And unlike Lincoln’s
vision, theirs is “government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the
wealthy”.
The big question here is: Will the American people once again
rise up to take back their country? And will there be a strong leader like
Lincoln or the Roosevelts to lead them?
Here is one more quote, attributed to Wesley Lowery: Power
is never given, it’s taken.”
Sources
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-9-2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/16/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-congress-audio-essay.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/opinion/trump-jefferson-doge-hamilton.html
No comments:
Post a Comment