“True. But the terrible irony that you will never ever not in a million years get a conservative or libertarian to admit is that this very weakness now is allowing a different sort of tyranny to emerge. We, the People, no longer have anything to say about our own country. It’s all in the hands of corporations and lobbyists. The result is a loss of genuine political liberty, the loss of government by the consent of the governed, as surely as if Congress had been taken over by a military junta.” – maha

Epic nonsense. Obama was elected by 53% of the electorate. That means that 47% of the electorate did not vote for him. Most objective analysts will say his margin of victory was inflated by a significant percentage that were not voting for Obama and his agenda so much as they were voting against the disastrous Bush administration. Obama and Axelrod were very effective at painting McCain as an extension of the Bush administration and using that tactic won a a decisive election, but by no means a mandate for the far left agenda advocated by the author. To conclude that the views of the author are in fact the views of “We, the people” and the failure to steamroll those policies over those who opposed them (regardless of whether they voted for or against Obama) is somehow evidence of the US being a “failed state” is a display of arrogance on a monumental scale. Our system was designed to protect the minority from being run roughshod by the majority, and in particular to protect individual civil and property rights from being violated by the government, even if the majority wants them violated. I am not sanguine that our system will hold up under the breakdown of those protections we are seeing with Single Party Control (both the R version and D verrsion), but at least it is slowing down the continuing erosion of our freedoms. Thank FSM for small favors.

Bill H, what troubles me is not only that we’re letting corporations take our self-determination away, but that we’re paying them to take it away. Pretty much very cent we spend goes into their pockets. They’ve turned voters into enablers — and we’ve accepted the role quite willingly.

Isn’t there something wrong with a system that allowed Reagan/Gingrich/Bush to turn the world’s richest, freest country into a decaying, plutocratic, militarized rogue state?

Careful reading of the Declaration of Independence reveals that it depicts government as an alien force making rebellion against it a natural act. At this point in time, that ‘alien force’ can best be described as a prime example of institutionalized arrogance.

britononthemitten
26 Jun 09, 1:10pm
What exactly would George prefer?

Isn’t that style of government what the founding fathers wanted to get away from?

Yeah, numbnuts, they’re called lobbyists.

Well, yes and no. The reason corporations and the moneyed oligarchy have taken over has to do with the money spent on elections. But the reason that money is as successful as it is has a lot to do with the fact that barely half of people elidgible to vote do so, and of those who vote a great number do so with very little effort at becoming informed, simply accepting whateverpap is fed to them by the corporate media.

In the movie “An American President” Michael Douglas makes a great speech to the effect of “Democracy is hard work. If you want it you have to work at it. If you sit on your tail and don’t work at it then someone will come along and take it away from you, and when that happens you have no one but yourselves to blame.”

The American people are sitting on their tails and the moneyed oligarchy is taking government of the people away from the people. That is what happens when the people sit on their tails and do not exercise their franchise.