The biggest threat to our democracy is the merging of corporate and political power - an act convincingly referred to as “corporatism†by Benito Mussolini who concretely stated, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.â€
Updated 1/26/05: I didn't express myself very well yesterday. I think the greatest danger to our democracy is erosion of the separation of church and state. I do think there is a great risk in bringing corporations into government discourse like Bush has, and a huge danger if they get much further.
Corporations currently employ most of us. They have an important role in this country. They do have a vested interest and power that needs to be contained so that they are forced to serve their community. They're power needs to be contained so they are no more represented than any other special interest group with large numbers of members. That's why the laissez faire business policies of Bush can never work in the long run. But I don't see Corporations as the greatest danger. They are an 800 lbs gorilla that need to be caged, but well fed.
And while I'm tempted by the Greens and find I agree more with Nader than Kerry, realistically we have to place our vote where it will do something more than the performance of a symbolic act. I want the Republicans vanquished!
2 comments:
I have to disagree. Inviting corporations into the government is a truly dangerous prospect, IMHO, because corporations only care about THEIR bottom line, not the people they employ.
If a corporation can save money by outsourcing your job overseas, chance are they will. If they can get laws passed that help them do that, they will.
Corporations, while they employ the majority of people, are not democratic institutions representative of the people they employ. They areautocratic institutions with a selfish bent, as they should be. They are businesses, and it is their entire raison d'etre to make money.
This precludes them from public service and, as such, they have no business defining policy for the American people.
~A!
"Fascism" is such an operatic term. Pity old Benito didn't adopt that other term, corporatism. It would have made the connexions so much more obvious, today.
As to the Jesus-freaks, I think they're a sideshow, and a deliberate distraction. The fact is, the Repukes have implemented very little of the Fundies' agenda. They keep stringing them along, getting them to do the legwork for them. But the Pukes have controlled Congress, the White House and the Courts for some years now, and in especially favorable circumstances, for the right-wing agenda. Yet, abortion's still legal, prayer is still largely out of the schools, and gay marriage is... Well, OK, it'll have to wind through the Courts for a while. But I doubt we'll actually see a Constitutional Amendment banning it.
The Jesus-freaks are much more bound to the Pukes than the Unions are to the Dems, alas. The Pukes don't have to actually DO anything much for their votes: Just talk. Almost like the Dems on Union issues...
That's exactly why I think the Corps are the danger: They are the real movers & shakers in BOTH Parties. And they don't even have any votes. What does THAT tell you?
This is a plutocracy, and the Fundies, and the Unions, and the rest of us don't have any money, compared to the Corps. So what if we outnumber them? They short-circuit the electoral system with liberal applications on that great super-conductor, moolah. The funny thing is, it's our money: The surplus value of our labour. The profits from our consumption. The taxes we pay that they don't. And every penny of it that goes into the pockets of the politicians we elected, to pay for our votes. What a perfect system!
Ask any politician what he spends his day doing. Answer: Raising money and listening to corporate lobbyists, as if there were a difference. The lobbyists write the laws that affect the Corps they work for, with a fee to the pols in "campaign contributions." That leaves the rest of us out on the pavement, including the Unions AND the Fundies.
Mussolini would have understood this system, and worked it like Dubya. What the Nazis and the Fascisti did to the Jews, and gays, and gypsies, and others, was icing on the cake for the nutjobs in the streets. The real agenda was, as Benito said, a corporate take-over of the State. It's the mirror-image of Stalinism's State takeover of the corporations: Either way, the rest of us are left out in the cold. And as long as they don't go too far with that bloody "icing," the corporatists will get their real agenda without a fuss.
That's why I say the Fundies are a sideshow. They'll never get what they want. It would raise too much ire at their corporate masters, and hamper their agenda. We should not allow ourselves to be distracted from fighting the Corps by their clownish Fundies.
Ah, screw it. Here, have a laugh on the Xtians:
"The Book of Joke"
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