....to the 19th century and the age of Robber Baron Industrialists and Financiers, only today the politicians have their slime-ball hands in the pot as well:
<snip>
Robber baron was a term revived in the 19th century in the United States as a pejorative reference to businessmen and bankers who dominated their respective industries and amassed huge personal fortunes, typically as a direct result of pursuing various allegedly anti-competitive or unfair business practices. The term may now be used in relation to any businessman or banker who is perceived to have used questionable business practices in order to become powerful or wealthy.
The term derives from the medieval German lords who illegally charged exorbitant tolls against ships traversing the Rhine river (see robber baron). There has been some dispute over the term's origin and use. It was popularized by U.S. political and economic commentator Matthew Josephson during The Great Depression in a 1934 book. He attributed its first use to an 1880 anti-monopoly pamphlet in which Kansas farmers applied it to railroad magnates. The informal term captains of industry may sometimes be used to avoid the negative connotations of "robber baron".
<MORE>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
<snip>
Published on Thursday, January 20, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Robber Barons' Party
Let's Bring Tea
by Thom Hartmann
The Robber Barons are back.
They're staging a celebration of their power in Washington, DC, where they help write the majority of legislation and hold captive all but a very few of our nation's legislators. The television networks they own are showing the party in all its pomp and ceremony. The newspapers and magazines they own are telling us what a fine time is being had by all in Washington, DC. The radio stations, networks, and talk show hosts they own are reassuring us that they know what is best, that all will be well, that "freedom is on the march."
Every generation, it is often said, must relearn the lessons of history. This generation is getting a crash course.
Shall we have a government of, by, and for We, the People? Or shall we be governed by a powerful elite made up of the super-rich, multi-national corporations, and well-paid shills who do their bidding?
It seems that the shift from FDR's vision of We the People to Reagan's vision of corporate governance has only happened in the past thirty years - when Reagan, in his first inaugural address, declared war on We the People by saying: "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem."
But it's really a battle that's gone back to 1762, when Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote "The Social Contract," and directly challenged - for the first time in nearly two thousand years - the idea that people must be governed by a powerful father-figure King, Pope, or Feudal Lord.
"Man was born free," Rousseau opened his book with, "and he is everywhere in chains." Those chains, he suggested, were forged by a belief that people's inherent nature was weak and evil, and people were incapable of governing themselves. Rousseau - and, following him, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Franklin, and others among our nation's Founders - rejected the belief that society would disintegrate without kings, popes, or rule by a rich elite.
But the need for an all-powerful ruling elite was a notion that was strongly ingrained in the mind of the Western World at the time of our founding.
Thomas Hobbes, one of history's most eloquent spokesmen for the Reagan/Bush/Imperial type of worldview, wrote in his 1651 magnum opus "Leviathan," that without a strong and iron-fisted ruler, "in every man is enemy to every
man...."
"In such condition," Hobbes added, "there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Thus, without a powerful father figure ruler, Hobbes suggested, "it may be perceived what manner of life there would be, where there were no common power to fear..."
Liberty, Hobbes believed, was a dangerous thing. It produced misery.
<MORE>
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0120-24.htm
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
