(Founding) Fathers Know Best
By Nick Paleologos
Utah Senator
Mike Lee, best known for playing Mini-Me to Senator Ted Cruz’s Dr. Evil, has
just written a new book called, “Our Lost Constitution.” In case you find the
title ambiguous, the sub-title removes all doubt: “The Willful Subversion of
America’s Founding Document.” His thesis, a familiar far right refrain, is that if we could just stick to what the Founders intended,
America would be a much better country. I second that motion.
Once upon a time, during a sweltering summer in
Philadelphia, a bunch of guys who later became known as the Founding Fathers
hammered out a brand new system of government. The constitution they wrote is a
Rube Goldberg contraption--chock full of checks and balances--because they all
shared one immutable conviction: Too much power in too few hands will always
be abused. That is what they believed.
The Founders were so paranoid about the concentration of
power that they gave equal leverage to three separate and distinct
branches of government as the only practical way they could think of to
guarantee the stated goals of their ambitious enterprise: life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness for all citizens in the new country. And even
then, they weren’t completely certain. Upon leaving the constitutional
convention, Benjamin Franklin was famously cornered by local citizens eager to
find out what kind of government the delegates had created. “A republic,”
Franklin replied, “if you can keep it.”
The Founders had absolutely no faith in mankind left to
its own devices. They did not believe in the essential goodness of human
nature. On the contrary, from their eighteenth century perch the history of
“civilization” was not a pretty picture. Stretching back in time as far as they
could see was an ugly and unbroken chain of greed, corruption, cruelty and
oppression. Even in the empire they left behind, power was concentrated in the
hands of a wealthy self-perpetuating minority doing what they do best: treating
everybody else badly. The British Crown seemed to exist only to preserve and
protect the plutocracy.
The notion that fairness, justice and prosperity would
trickle down from a benevolent few at the top of society’s pyramid was an utterly
laughable concept to our Founding Fathers. Why then do you suppose
conservatives like Mike Lee, who worship at the Founders’ altar of separation
of powers when it comes to government, abandon the principle when it comes to business?
Apparently for Mike Lee, somewhere along the road from Washington to Wall Street human nature (as the Founders understood it) does a complete one-eighty. Because today’s Tea Party
enthusiasts see absolutely no
need for a balance of power between labor and capital. Instead they proudly and
relentlessly assert that capital actually deserves better treatment than labor--a favored position in law.
As surely as night follows day they insist, lower taxes (and higher profits) targeted
exclusively for the rich will inevitably result in higher wages for everybody else.
Because when the rich get richer, they become nicer people. Labor doesn’t need
leverage. If the 99% simply work harder, become more productive, and generate
more profits, they will most assuredly enjoy the fruits of their
labor--courtesy of that grateful one percent at the top. Over the past several decades, this theory has been put to the test in America. And
the results have been disastrous.
SOURCE: Park Avenue - Money, Power and the American
Dream (2012) directed by Alex Gibney
Source: Former
US Labor Secretary, Robert Reich
The Founders would indeed be
horrified at the “willful subversion” of the balance of powers principle. But not the one Mike Lee's talking about, the other one. The balance of
power between labor and capital in a country in which the wealthiest 1% pay lower
income tax rates and lower social security tax rates than everybody
else; where CEO’s are paid 300 times more than the average worker (up
from 20 times more in 1965); where the minimum wage (adjusted for inflation) is
actually lower today than it was in 1968; and where unions are being
legislated out of existence.
“When the day
comes, when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we
must…re-adjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.”
That’s not Elizabeth Warren talking. It’s James Madison.
