Jeb Bush’s Favorite Author Rejects Democracy, Says The Hyper-Rich Should Seize Power

[workinclasszero]

Jeb Bush’s Favorite Author Rejects Democracy, Says The Hyper-Rich Should Seize Power
BY IAN MILLHISER POSTED ON MAY 26, 2015 AT 8:00 AM

By The People, however, rejects outright the idea that Murray’s vision for a less generous and well-regulated society can be achieved through appeals to elected officials — or even through appeals to unelected judges. The government Murray seeks is “not going to happen by winning presidential elections and getting the right people appointed to the Supreme Court.” Rather, By The People, is a call for people sympathetic to Murray’s goals — and most importantly, for fantastically rich people sympathetic to those goals — to subvert the legitimate constitutional process entirely.

“The emergence of many billion-dollar-plus private fortunes over the last three decades,” Murray writes, “has enabled the private sector to take on ambitious national or even international tasks that formerly could be done only by nation-states.” Murray’s most ambitious proposal is a legal defense fund, which “could get started if just one wealthy American cared enough to contribute, say, a few hundred million dollars,” that would essentially give that wealthy American veto power over much of U.S. law.

Murray, in other words, would rather transfer much of our sovereign nation’s power to govern itself to a single privileged individual than continue to live under the government America’s voters have chosen. It’s possible that no American has done more to advance the cause of monarchy since Benedict Arnold.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/05/26/3662560/jeb-bushs-favorite-author-publishes-318-page-rant-democracy/

[kenfrequed]

1. Hmm

I am torn here.

A part of me thinks that this is an appeal to some kind of counter-revolutionary antidemocratic movement to gradual take over by taking over communications, disenfranchising voters, subverting the courts, rearranging rules for elections, and then gradually convincing people of the idea that the wealthy deserve their place in life by merity and are best to rule over us all...


I had a punchline for this but I'm already too saddened to properly deliver it.

Seriously, I think that this kind of writing is more about defending the system we have arrived at than it is for calling on a new form of plutonomy or plutocracy. We are already there.

[leveymg]

2. They already have a lock on the process and outcomes. Look at the presumed candidates in both

parties. No matter who controls the White House and the Senate, the GOP will in all likelihood hold the House because of years of gerrymandering at the State House level funded by far-right moguls and plutocrats and their "charitable" foundations.

Cartel ownership of a deregulated media means that most of the public continues to be bombarded by lies and hateful stereotypes.

Then, there's the RW's lock on the Supreme Court.

They have every move covered. Murray is way behind the curve.

[Johonny]

3. Just shows Jeb likes his science when its cooked, baked, and hates on black people

just like Murray's horribly racist, statically irrelevant "Bell Curve."