Democracy’s Arrow

[liberal N proud]

Published on Monday, February 7, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Joel S. Hirschhorn
<snip>
Aldous Huxley said: “The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.” Politically correct silence about declining American democracy is ruinous. This is a painful truth that we must not be time-blind to. Because if we are, then democracy’s arrow points downward toward a fake democracy.


“The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless… …We must crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to bid defiance to the laws of our country.” We did not listen, so our democracy has become more like a corporate theocracy and fascist feudal state in which “we the serfs” serve the corporate state as workers, consumers and docile, distracted citizens. Misrepresentative government and corporatism oppress citizens.

President Abraham Lincoln wrote: “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country…corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” Guess what? That crisis has arrived. Americans should be trembling. Corporations have been enthroned. We are in an era of corruption in high places. The money power of our country does effectively prolong its distortion of our representative democracy. Most wealth is in the hands of a few. That saddles us, today, with the responsibility to prevent our Republic from being destroyed.

Decades later, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt echoed this fear: “The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That is, in essence, fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling power. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.” Half a century later, corporate power is still growing.

Today’s most powerful political leaders do not talk this way, not because we have escaped the danger that Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt contemplated, but because we have succumbed to it. Only a few blunt truth-tellers are speaking this kind of candor – none in public office. Our elected “representatives” are silent about what is most disturbing and destructive in our society. Especially Republican conservatives, who do not walk the talk of democracy.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0207-22.htm