Political Revolution
I was doing some reading this weekend about the Constitutional Convention. I came across some quotes, one familiar, two maybe less so:
...That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that wnever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it... --The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, 1776
It is a general maxim in every government, there must exist, somewhere, a supreme, sovereign, absolute and uncontrollable power; but this power resides always in the body of the people; and it never was, or can be delegated to one man or a few. --=The General Court of Massachusetts, 1776
...those deluded People. King George III, 1775
I came across them in Palmer's The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760 - 1800.
It struck me that this is exactly what Sanders is calling for when he talks about a political revolution: altering our nation, our government, to remove the destructive influence of big money. That when he says he can't do it alone, he's telling us that "the body of the people" must rise to get the job done.
And that conventional wisdom in our nation and in our party leadership reflects King George III.
What George didn't "get," and what those clinging to conventional wisdom today don't get, is that every effort to contain unrest, to soothe it with platitudes and false hope, or to put it down with force, simply fans the flames of determination higher.
It seems to me that many clinging to that conventional political wisdom simply fear the risk involved in stepping forward to be active agents for significant change. Of course, some, like the Loyalists, don't want that kind of change. They support the status quo.
According to John Adams: We were about one third Tories [Loyalists], and one third timid, and one third true blue.
I wonder what he'd say about today's Democratic Party, and about the whole nation?
For myself, I've been reflecting on the fact that, on the issue of big money in politics and government, Democrats, and DU, are fairly unified in opposition, at least on the surface. I ask myself, if not now, when? I think that, as long as people are afraid of that revolution to remove the destructive influence of big money from our government, as long as the body of the people don't rise, we will continue our march to destruction.
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