Bernie Sanders
Related: About this forumThe line in the political sand is growing very long...
The line to see Bernie in Cleveland:
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rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)big money in politics. I don't think they will go lightly into the night if the primary is stolen by the DNC, Goldman-Sachs, DWS and HRC. It's interesting that the HRC followers can't figure it out that they should join the masses to fight corruption. The masses won't join them in supporting the corrupt system. But as I see it, the HRC aren't interested in the logic of backing Sen Sanders with the People, because they are afraid to not have their strong, tough authoritarian leader. Freedom and liberty are too hard for some.
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)"Freedom and liberty are too hard for some."
This is why we can't have nice things.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)our founders cry. They would call them "loyalists". Loyal to the monarchy or the Oligarchy.
AOR
(692 posts)interested in protecting the private property of such. Nothing more and nothing less. The sooner people get the tooth-fairy idea out of their head that the "founding fathers" had benevolence of the WHOLE in mind the better off we'll be going forward.
As a leftist friend put it...
"The pattern that was set by the Revolution and the Constitution persists today. The net results of that pattern are tyranny and destruction. Who was set free by the revolution and for what purposes? Who is protected by the Constitution? Those who find a way to rise, to make a fortune one way or another - born to it, marry it, use capitalism to amass it, kiss up to it as some sort of court jester - as with the attorneys for the wealthy and powerful. This is a distinctly American pattern, and is not a law of the universe or the inevitable outcome of something about human nature.
This new class - from New England shipping magnates to slave traders to bankers to real estate speculators to brokers to dealers and developers, with their connections and law degrees and control over the legislatures - ascended to power and remains in power. Those whose skills and contributions cannot be leveraged into massive fortunes are left behind. We can't expect a nurse or a teacher to make a fortune selling their skills on the supposed free market, and that means they are powerless in the American system, unless they organize, and the history of the country is an ongoing ruthless suppression of such organizing.
The Revolution liberated, and the Constitution protects, a new group of striving, upwardly mobile men and a particular path to amassing wealth and gaining power. The crown was a check on their lust for power. The working class didn't benefit by the Revolution and is not protected by the Constitution. Were that true, then we would expect to find that the working class would have been dramatically worse off in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and in the UK itself over the years.
We are to believe that because we threw off the monarchy, and because we don't have a European style landed aristocracy, that we are therefore “free.” Pointing out that there were working class men fighting in the Revolution who, "whether or not they had property demanded the franchise" tells us nothing. Working class people at all times and places have yearned to overthrow the tyranny of the aristocracy. That doesn't legitimatize or mitigate the replacement of one tyranny with another."
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)gave up their fortunes and some their lives to break away from tyranny. They weren't perfect but better than the British. And we had the groundwork to establish a democracy that again wasn't perfect but better than anything at the time. Don't think I agree with American Exceptionalism, I don't.
AOR
(692 posts)is the fact that revolutions are possible and very real in historical material reality. As the comment stated... replacing one tyranny with another is far from any solution for the working class in any epoch of history. The post wasn't a personal shot at you by the way. Your post just gave an opportunity for a response on the founders and on what's historically real and what is historical illusion.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)wasn't a real revolution. We were separated from Britain by a huge ocean. We broke off and they couldn't keep us. We didn't change their government. We were a colony that broke free. While the elites that ruled the early USofA were better than those that ruled Britain (The East India Company), they were still elites. Elites will always rule. Get any group together and the elites will take over. I am including intellectual elites with financial elites.
AOR
(692 posts)the power is in the hands of the struggling mass of the working class, the exploited and the oppressed.
"When all the bricklayers, and all the machinists, and all the miners, and blacksmiths, and printers, and hod-carriers, and stevedores, and house-painters, and brakemen, and engineers, and conductors, and factory hands, and horse-car drivers, and all the shop-girls, and all the sewing-women, and all the telegraph operators; in a word all the myriads of toilers in whom is slumbering the reality of that thing which you call Power ... when these rise, call the vast spectacle by any deluding name that will please your ear, but the fact remains a people has
risen."
--Mark Twain
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)to lead. OWS was a good example.
senz
(11,945 posts)You won't find "capitalism" in any of our founding documents. The purpose of the Constitution was to create a means of self-government so that citizens could secure their inalienable rights and protect themselves from tyranny whether by a majority or a minority. The purpose of our government was not to enable the accumulation of wealth; it was to ensure basic political freedoms.
Our nation's founders were not capitalists. They were not poor, but they were not the wealthiest, either. The wealthiest tended to be loyal to the King of England and fled the country after the revolution. Land was plentiful and relatively affordable, and most of our founders supported themselves from their land. What we call capitalism didn't exist in the 18th century.
The 18th century was not a time of great social enlightenment; Africans and women were considered inferior beings. But the flexible government our founders created made it possible for us to achieve the progress toward social parity that we saw in the 19th, 20th, and so far in the 21st century. The struggle continues.
AOR
(692 posts)The constitution was most assuredly an economic document as well as a political one and no narrative you provide would prove otherwise. It is simple historical fact. Beyond that the "founding fathers" were most certainly capitalists. The "founding fathers" of American capitalism in all truth.
Your defense of the constitutional government as one that "ensures political freedoms" rather than accumulation of wealth is also quite laughable in all reality. It certainly ensures political freedom for those with accumulated wealth and always has. For the rest not so much. "Freedom and justice" goes to the highest bidder.
senz
(11,945 posts)Why don't you try reading the Constitution? It creates a government. It does not set up an economic system. How absurd! Narrative? I'm not giving you a narrative. All you have to do is read the document. Just read it. Or even scan it. See what it covers.
Here, I'll give you a head start from wikipedia -- an overview.
The Constitution, originally comprising seven articles, delineates the national frame of government.
Its first three articles entrench the doctrine of the separation of powers, whereby the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress; the executive, consisting of the President; and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts.
Articles Four, Five and Six entrench concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments and of the states in relationship to the federal government.
Article Seven establishes the procedure subsequently used by the thirteen States to ratify it.
There's not one damn bit of "economics" in there. None.
AOR, the only place I've encountered your misconception is out on other message boards with conservatives and here at DU with one arrogant Hillary supporter who happens to champion capitalism. One conservative actually insisted that the word "capitalism" is in the Constitution. I was aghast when they said that. Clearly they'd been listening to Limbaugh or one of his fellow rightwing propagandists.
Now, let me also tell you that what our founders did was noble and good. It may look simple and dry at first, but it's ingenious, extremely well thought out, and the best protector of freedom that we have. Get to know it. Honor it.
I suspect you've been misled by conservative pundits. They did you a disservice.
AOR
(692 posts)If you think the protections inscribed in the Constitution in regards to private property, property rights, property interests, commerce, military appropriations, taxes and tariffs, ect...have nothing to do with economics then I can't help you on your journey. "Political economy" has a meaning in examination and analysis of such things.
It is you that have been misled by your illusions of the greatness of the "grand American experiment" (that was never really all that grand to begin with but a ruling class scam in the making from its inception) that has become the grand American nightmare of death, poverty, wage-slavery, destruction, and ruthless Empire. There seems be a fundamental weakness in your illusions of the "American Dream" and the great Constitutional scheme senz...poor people keep showing up by the millions. The tattered ghosts of the late Roman Empire rulers are probably shamed at the effectiveness of such "founding fathers."
I suggest you "enlighten" yourself before casting aspersions of Limbaugh, Clinton supporter, or right-wing propaganda on genuine leftist cynicism of the motivations behind the Grand American Constitutional Scheme and the motives of its "Founding Fathers." It's doubtful that Bertell Ollman (as one example of many Marxists and leftists who share the same opinion) will ever be confused for Rush Limbaugh, Clinton supporters, or right-wing propagandists.
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Toward a Marxist Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution
by Bertell Ollman
(Snip)
When Moses invented ten fundamental laws for the Jewish people, he had God write them down on stone tablets, Lycurgus, too, represented the constitution he drew up for ancient Sparta as a divine gift. According to Plato, whose book, The Republic, offers another version of the same practice, attributing the origins of a constitution to godly intervention is the most effective way of securing the kind of support needed for it to work. Otherwise, some people are likely to remain skeptical, others passive, and still others critical of whatever biases they perceive in these basic laws, and hence less inclined to follow their mandates. As learned men, the framers of the American Constitution were well aware of the advantages to be gained by enveloping their achievement in religious mystery, but most of the people for whom they labored were religious dissenters who favored a sharp separation between church and state; and since most of the framers were deists and atheists themselves, this particular tactic could not be used. So they did the next best thing, which was to keep the whole process of their work on the Constitution a closely guarded secret. Most Americans know that the framers met for three months in closed session, but this is generally forgiven on the grounds that the then Congress of the United States had not commissioned them to write a new Constitution, and neither revolutionaries nor counter-revolutionaries can do all their work in the open. What few modern-day Americans realize, however, is that the framers did their best to ensure that we would never know the details of their deliberations. All the participants in the convention were sworn to life-long secrecy, and when the debates were over, those who had taken notes were asked to hand them in to George Washington, whose final task as chairman of the convention was to get rid of the evidence. American's first president, it appears, was also its first shredder.
(Snip)
Fortunately, not all the participants kept their vows of silence or handed in all their notes. Bit it wasn't until 1840, a half century after the Constitution was put into effect, with the posthumous surfacing of James Madison's extensive notes, that the American people could finally read what had happened in those three crucial months in Philadelphia. What was revealed was neither divine nor diabolical, but simply human, an all-too-human exercise in politics. Merchants, bankers, ship-owners, planters, slave traders and slave owners, land speculators, and lawyers, who made their money working for these groups, voiced their interests and fears in clear, uncluttered language; and, after settling a few, relatively minor disagreements, they drew up plans for a form of government they believe would serve these interests most effectively. But the fifty years of silence had the desired myth-building effect. The human actors were transformed into "Founding Fathers." Their political savvy and common sense were now seen as all-surpassing wisdom, and their concern for their own class of property owners (and, to a lesser, extent, sections of the country and occupational groups) had been elevated to universal altruism (in the liberal version) or self-sacrificing patriotism (in the preferred conservative view). Nor have we been completely spared the aura of religious mystery so favored by Plato. With the passage of years and the growing religiosity of our citizenry, it had become almost commonplace to hear that the framers were also divinely inspired.
(Snip)
Taken at face value, the Constitution is an attempt to fix the relations between state and federal governments, and between the three branches—legislative, executive, and judiciary—of the latter. And most accounts of this document have concentrated on the mechanical arrangements that make this balancing act possible. In the process, the Constitution's basic assumptions and particularly its social and economic purposes have been grossly neglected. It is a little like learning in some detail how a car works before even knowing what kind of machine it is, what it is supposed to do, and why it was constructed in just this way. Learning the functioning of any system, whether mechanical or institutional, is not without value in determining its meaning and use, but we would do better to approach their symbiosis from the other side, to examine who needed what and how the specific structures created responded to these needs. What is really at stake in any political dispute, the real-life questions involved, and why different people take the positions they do, can never be adequately understood by focusing solely or even mainly on the legalistic forms in which the issues are presented and fought out.
(Snip)
In examining any political phenomena, it is always wise to ask, "Who benefits?" As regards the American constitutional system, the answer was given clearly, if somewhat crudely, by Senator Boies Penrose, a late nineteenth-century Republican from Pennsylvania, who told a business audience: "I believe in a division of labor. You send us to Congress; we pass the laws under which you make money … and out of your profits you further contribute to our campaigns funds to send us back again to pass more laws to enable you to make more money" (Green, 35). When, a few years later, Charles Beard suggested that the same kind considerations may have played a role in the writing of the Constitution, he unleashed a political storm against his book that had few if any parallels in our history. Then-president Taft publicly denounced this unseemly muckraking as besmirching the reputations of our Founding Fathers. Not particularly noted for his indifference to economic gain when he became president, Warren Harding, at that time a newspaper publisher, attacked Beard's filthy lies and rotten perversions" in an article entitled, "Scavengers, Hyena-Like, Desecrate the Graves of the Dead Patriots We Revere" (McDonald, xix). And even as a growing number of professional historians came to accept Beard's interpretation, the city of Seattle banned his book.
kath
(10,565 posts)think
(11,641 posts)kath
(10,565 posts)Go, Bernie, Go!
Fawke Em
(11,366 posts)Fawke Em
(11,366 posts)The seating capacity is 13,610, but as it's normally a basketball arena, I don't know what that would be with people allowed to stand on the floor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolstein_Center
harris8
(179 posts)
smiley
(1,432 posts)I'm not sure I can trust lines like that. How do I know people aren't running from the front to be in the back?
aidbo
(2,328 posts)
PatrickforO
(14,574 posts)All of these people, plus myself, think you ARE electable, and we're looking forward to giving the establishment, the pundits and the pollsters a happy little surprise when the voting begins!
jhart3333
(332 posts)Very encouraging. Hmmm, I only just realized what that word means.
senz
(11,945 posts)The people DO.
AzDar
(14,023 posts)
AOR
(692 posts)would not have posted in your thread if I knew that. I try to stay out of the groups so as not to invade the groups private space for discussion. Thought your OP was in General Discussion area and jumped in with a few replies. Apologies for muddying up your Bernie Sanders thread in the group.
Admiral Loinpresser
(3,859 posts)Thank goodness we can still extend civility across tribal lines.
