Then let us consider how those principles have been severely undermined, and how we, the American people, can restore them so that once again our government is of, by, and for the people, rather than a tool of oppression cynically utilized for the benefit of a small, powerful, abusive, elite political and financial class, to the detriment of the vast majority of U.S. citizens, as well as billions of people around the world.
We often hear it said that the United States is the greatest nation in the world. What exactly is meant by that? And is it true? The more important question is: Can we, the American people, make this, once again, a great and proud nation -- a nation that lives up to its original promise? We can achieve that -- if only we will.
Who are we as a people, what do we really believe in, and just what does our nation stand for? How far have we drifted away -- or, rather, bolted away -- from what we once were? And how do we, once again, attain greater freedom, more equal opportunity, compassion, and security for all?
These questions have never been more vital to consider and confront. Our nation has been transformed in just a few short years -- virtually unrecognizable in fundamental respects when compared to the republic that once proudly proclaimed a constitutional system of checks and balances, the rule of law, and constitutional protections of due process, restraints on war-making, and a truly balanced system of separation of powers among three co-equal branches of government.
We are at a nation-changing -- even world-changing -- fork in the road. We can continue on the path of becoming more totalitarian, even fascist, with an imperial presidency that continues to accrue to itself unprecedented tyrannical powers; more greedy as a nation and as a people; less capable to compete on a global stage; more empire-building and war-mongering; less equal under the law; more divided, in terms of income and wealth, between a tiny elite financial aristocracy and the rest of our citizenry; more cruel toward men, women, and children, here and abroad, who are not part of the elite political and financial classes; and less secure, as a nation and as individuals, now and in the future.
Or we can turn things around radically, becoming more free and respectful of the fundamental rights and interests of people in the U.S. and elsewhere, with restraints on executive power -- and accountability for abuses of that power -- as contemplated by the founders and by our Constitution; more generous and helpful as a nation and as a people; more capable of competing with other nations, their students, and their workers; more cooperative and friendly toward other nations; more committed to liberty and justice for all; more prosperous, with a strong, healthy middle class, capable of living rewarding lives through equal opportunity; kinder and more compassionate toward our own citizens, immigrants, and men, women, and children in other nations; and more secure in our homes, our communities, and our nation, presently and in the future.
The second sentence of the Declaration of Independence sets forth the general guiding principles of the founding of our great nation:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
There could be no stronger affirmation of our nation's guiding principles of freedom, equal opportunity, compassion, and personal, familial, community, and national security.
These guiding principles ring loudly in the first sentence of our Constitution:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The guiding principles, then, set forth in the Declaration of
Independence and our Constitution are that people -- all people,
not just citizens of the United States -- are created as equals,
they all have unalienable rights, including the right to life,
the right to liberty and the right to pursue happiness, that we
seek to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility (that is,
peace), provide for the defense of our nation (that is,
security), promote the welfare of everyone, and secure liberty
not only for us, but for later generations -- "our posterity."
It is for each generation to exercise conscientious diligence in
sustaining those guiding principles. Sadly -- tragically --
those who were to have represented our interests in Washington,
particularly during these past 10 years, have severely
undermined those principles. And we, the people, have not
sufficiently spoken out and acted to return our nation to the
principled course set by the Founders. But we can -- if only we
will.
After World War II, the U.S. and its allies prosecuted and
convicted Germans for war crimes and crimes against humanity at
the Nuremberg Tribunal. The chief prosecutor was United States
Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. He made it clear that
aggressive war -- that is, a military attack by an aggressor
nation against a nation that has not attacked, and is not
preparing to attack the aggressor nation -- is a crime, as
reflected in a treaty to which the United States is a signatory,
the Kellogg-Briand Pact. He emphasized that if the criminal
prohibition against war is to have any meaning, it must be
applied to all nations, including, as he said, those sitting in
judgment at Nuremberg.
The illegality of aggressive war has been reinforced by the U.N.
Charter, which expressly prohibits a military attack by one
nation against another unless the target nation has itself
illegally attacked, or was about to illegally attack, the other
nation.
Instead of continuing the proud tradition of the Nuremberg
principles, and complying with the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the
United Nations Charter, the United States, during the Bush
administration, engaged in the blatantly criminal act of
invading and forcibly occupying Iraq, a nation that posed no
risk of harm whatsoever to the United States. It was the sort of
crime for which people were tried and convicted at Nuremberg.
Two Secretaries-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan and
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, agreed it was a clear violation of
international law -- yet no one has been held to account.
Making illegal war is the most serious crime because it purports
to legalize mass murder, severe injuries, mass property
destruction, and societal mayhem. Compounding this most serious
crime in our invasion and occupation of Iraq, it was committed
in blatant violation of the War Power Clause of the United
States Constitution, which provides that Congress has the sole
prerogative to decide whether to take our nation to war.
Congress cannot avoid its highest responsibility by
unconstitutionally delegating to the President the authority to
make the decision. However, that is exactly what Congress, in
cowardly derogation of its constitutional duties, has sought to
do repeatedly.
President Johnson lied to our nation about Vietnam in order to
get Congress to allow him to make the decision as to whether we
should make war against the North Vietnamese. Likewise,
President Bush lied to our nation about Iraq in order to get
Congress to pass the resolution allowing him to decide whether
to make war against that nation, which had no involvement
whatsoever in the attacks on 9/11. Our nation was deceived --
and we were betrayed -- all at an astounding cost in lives,
tragedy, and national treasure.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Congress's abdication of
perhaps its most important constitutional role was so pathetic
that all but a handful of U.S. Senators (including our present
Secretary of State) didn't even bother to walk to a secure room
in the Capitol Building to read a National Intelligence
Estimate, which made clear, contrary to what President Bush and
his administration were telling us, that much of the U.S.
intelligence community disagreed with claims about Iraq
developing a nuclear capability and about its possession of
weapons of mass destruction. In fact, just a few months before
9/11, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell independently stated
that, following the first Gulf war, Iraq's weapons had been
destroyed, it had not re-armed, and it didn't even pose a danger
to its neighbors. Senator Bob Graham, who urged his colleagues
to read the National Intelligence Estimate, went so far as to
warn, correctly, that the security of the people of the United
States would be put at great risk if we attacked Iraq, saying to
his colleagues that, if they voted to allow the president to
make the decision to go to war, blood would be on their hands.
More than a million innocent Iraqis killed, more seriously
injured, and vast hatred and hostility generated throughout the
Muslim world toward the United States, making us much less safe
for generations to come -- all on the basis of lies. Had
Congress done its fact-finding job and met its constitutional
responsibility to determine for itself if war against Iraq was
justified, none of it would ever have happened.
Several presidents since Truman have unconstitutionally made war
against other nations, and several Congresses have
unconstitutionally sought to delegate their war decision-making
power to the president. So where have the courts been to make
certain that the War Power Clause of the Constitution is
followed? That is, after all, how our constitutional system of
checks and balances is supposed to work.
The sad answer that strikes at the heart of our Constitution is
that the courts have checked out, making excuses for dodging the
question, most often in the form of the court-made "political
question" doctrine. The Congress and President both violate the
Constitution -- and the courts say, "Sorry, it's a political
question and we can't -- or, rather, won't -- do anything about
it." In other words, the War Power Clause essentially has been
ripped out of our Constitution -- leading to the incredibly
dangerous point where one person -- the President -- can make
the decision as to whether our nation goes to war. That takes us
one giant step closer to the tyranny our Founders sought to
prevent.
Our nation's proud tradition has been that we do not torture --
and we do not permit torture. George Washington ordered his
troops to refrain from torturing British soldiers, even when the
British were committing such atrocities against colonial
soldiers. The Lieber Code forbade torture during the Civil War.
The U.S. has court-martialed our own servicemen for torturing,
including water-boarding -- during the 1900 conflict in the
Philippines and during the Vietnam War. Numerous high-ranking
members of the military, including Utah's own Brig. Gen. (ret'd)
David Irvine, have uniformly called for enforcement of the
absolute prohibition against torture, arguing persuasively that
torture is productive of misinformation because torture victims
will say anything in order to avoid further torture; it creates
far more hatred and more enemies; and it creates a more
dangerous situation for our own servicemen and servicewomen.
Also, of course, it is fundamentally immoral, blatantly illegal,
under both international and domestic law, and dehumanizing and
demoralizing to those who engage in the torture.
We know now that President Bush and others in his administration
authorized the use of torture. Unbeknown to us at the time, on
the day before President Bush was at the Opening Ceremony for
the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympic Games, he signed a memorandum
stating, directly contrary to what the Supreme Court later
ruled, that the Geneva Convention protections against torture
would not apply to people detained in the so-called war on
terror. His authorization of torture, and the authorization by
others in his administration of torture, constitute war crimes,
under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture,
as well as under laws passed by Congress, including the War
Crimes Act of 1996 and the federal anti-torture statute.
When President Obama said concerning those war crimes -- and
about the federal felonies committed by those who engaged in
warrantless surveillance of Americans' communications -- that
there should be no accountability for the crimes because, in his
words, we should look forward and not back, he dangerously
contributed to the further deterioration of the rule of law in
our nation. His virtual granting of immunity, notwithstanding
the requirement in the Convention Against Torture that all
signatories must prosecute torture as they do other serious
offenses, is completely contrary to all applicable laws -- and
characteristic of a dictator who believes that he is the law. It
is another major ratcheting up of the imperial presidency -- and
another momentous degradation of the rule of law and our
constitutional system, in which the president and other members
of the Executive Branch are to be constrained by the law and by
the other two branches of our government. That evisceration of
the rule of law by President Obama and a Congress that has
timidly fallen in line with the assertion by the Bush and Obama
administrations of unprecedented executive powers take us one
more giant step closer to the tyranny our Founders sought to
prevent.
President Bush was not only a "decider," he was an innovator.
For the first time in our nation's history, we fought a war,
then two wars -- and, at the same time, instead of raising
revenues for the wars, he and the complicit Congress gave
enormous tax breaks to the very wealthy. It was as if we took
out credit cards in the names of our children and charged the
costs of the wars on them, while enriching the very rich even
more. It was a continuation of a reckless pattern of pandering
by so-called conservatives -- aided and abetted by Democrats.
Between 1979 and 2006, the top incremental tax rate on earned
income was cut in half; capital gains taxes were cut by almost
as much; and corporate taxes were reduced by more than 25%. Of
course, not many corporations pay according to even that rate
because of all the loopholes and deductions their lobbyists have
pushed through Congress over the years.
If the Bush tax cuts had been allowed to expire in 2010, as
promised, for people with incomes over $200,000, federal
revenues would increase approximately $140 billion during this
year. That would be sufficient to cover basic health-care needs
for those without coverage in the United States. What would the
impact be on those making more than $200,000 a year? It would
reduce their after-tax incomes, on average, by about 4.5%.
When offered the choice between health care for all or an
elimination of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, Congress and
the President have chosen less taxes for the wealthy.
The corrupting influence of money in our political system -- the
massive campaign contributions that essentially put Congress and
the White House on retainer to the wealthy -- has contributed
significantly to what I call the Great Chasm. One of many
examples is what Washington politicians -- those who are
supposed to be representing all of us -- did for hedge fund
managers. Our tax laws now allow hedge fund managers, some of
whom make more than a billion dollars a year, to have most of
their earnings taxed at the capital gains rate, 15%, while
middle class working men and women pay a significantly higher
rate. That loophole alone costs the federal government more than
$6 billion in lost revenue, which would be enough to provide
health care to three million children.[1] Almost $2 billion of
that tax boondoggle goes to 25 people.[2]
Over the past decade, the incomes of the middle class have
fallen, while those in the top 1 percent have enjoyed, on
average, an increase of 18% in their incomes. And what
incredible incomes they are! The top 1 percent in the United
States are paid about 25% of the total income -- and they
control a whopping 40% of the total wealth. The disparity in
income and wealth between the small privileged class of the
economic aristocracy and the rest of us in this nation has never
been as great as it is now since the 1920's, on the eve of the
Great Depression.
This is not something that just naturally happens because of
market forces. It happens because of politicians serving the
elite financial aristocracy to the immense detriment of the
public interest.
How did we build a strong, healthy middle class and a prosperous
economy following the Great Depression -- and what is taking us
back now to the gross inequality and tremendous insecurity for
most people reminiscent of the Gilded Age?
As Paul Krugman[3] describes, in the 1920s, there was a vast
political polarization and an enormous income and wealth
disparity -- very much like today. However, political reform --
public policy geared toward making life better for the vast
majority of Americans -- made all the difference. There was a
vast narrowing of the gap between the wealthy and the rest of
the nation -- what Krugman calls "The Great Compression." It was
entirely the opposite from today's Great Chasm.
Incomes for the very wealthy actually decreased from the 1920's
to the 1950's, while the incomes for middle-class families about
doubled. The middle class also had greater security, with
employers offering new benefits like health insurance and
retirement plans. The federal government also provided
unemployment insurance and Social Security for retirees.
It all equated to a major economic democratization of American
society, with much narrower differences between the pay for
executives and line workers, and much narrower differences
between employees with formal education and manual laborers.
Just the opposite of what we're experiencing today.
Much of the Gilded Age class consciousness was gone by the
1950s. And now it has returned. Many of the wealthy turn their
backs on the quality of public education as they enroll their
children in private schools. Many of the wealthy live only among
themselves, providing for their own security, as they isolate
themselves in gated communities. Only the best in medical care
for the wealthy, while 50 million people go without basic health
care coverage -- and, even if the Obama plan is fully
implemented 23 million men, women, and children will be without
essential medical coverage, unlike any other nation in the
developed world. And 700,000 bankruptcies each year are
attributable to enormous medical bills -- again, a tragedy
unknown throughout the rest of the industrialized world.
Much of the change came about because of taxes. In the 1920s,
the top income tax rate was only 24%. The top income tax rate
rose to 63% during the first Roosevelt administration, and 79%
in the second. By the mid-fifties, the top tax rate had risen to
91% -- and that was under the Republican administration of
Dwight Eisenhower. Today's top tax bracket -- applicable only to
income in excess of $388,000 -- is only 35%; yet listen to the
wealthy and their lapdogs in Congress howl when anyone has the
temerity to suggest that perhaps they should pay their fair
share to help reduce the accumulated debt and tremendous
interest burden we will hand off to our children and later
generations -- and to lend a hand up to those living in poverty,
including 22% of our nation's children.
The average corporate tax rate increased from less than 14% in
1929 to more than 45% in 1955 and 48% in 1979. Today's
corporate tax rate is 35%, but the average corporation pays no
more than 15%, and many corporations, like General Electric,
taking advantage of massive loopholes and deductions corporate
lobbyists have pushed through Congress, pay nothing at all.
The same thing happened with estate taxes -- what the
Republicans, with the aid of the spin-meister Frank Luntz, would
have us call "death taxes." Estate taxes went from 20% in the
1920's to 45%, then 60%, then 70%, and up to 77%. Today, the
estate tax, applicable only to estates in excess of $5.12
million, is 35%. Yet listen to some of the wealthy whine -- as
if their descendants are somehow entitled to more than $5
million without any taxation, while 22% of the children in the
United States live in poverty.
If, following the 1920s, taxes accounted for the decrease in
wealth for the very rich, what accounts mostly for the increase
in wealth and income for most of the rest? In large part, it was
the union movement. By the end of World War II, more than a
third of nonfarm workers were union members. Strong union
advocacy means higher wages, better benefits, and a rippling
effect that raises wages for others. It also brings into focus
the disparity between the pay of top executives and average
workers.
Also, during the war, the Roosevelt administration set wages
and, given the values of that administration, it tended to set
the wages in such a way that the lower paid workers received
more increases than others.
The increase in taxes for the wealthy, a strong union movement,
and wage controls that shrunk the gap between the wealthy and
the middle class led to a much more equal distribution of the
total income for 30 years -- as well as unprecedented
prosperity. Just the opposite of what we're experiencing today.
The gross inequalities today are alarming -- and tragic. As of
2007, the top 10% owned 84% of the financial wealth in the
United States.[4] The bottom 80% owned just 7% of all financial
wealth.
Between 1983 and 2004, in large part because of tax cuts for the
wealthy and the defeat of labor unions, of all the new financial
wealth created in the U.S., 43% of it went to the top 1%.
Ninety-four percent of it went to the top 20% -- meaning that
the bottom 80% received only 6% of all new financial wealth
generated in the United States during the strong economic years
of the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s.[5] In short, as working
people produced more because of greater efficiencies, they
shared in almost none of the gains -- while investors and top
executives took almost all of it.
One factor contributing to this gaping disparity is yet another
outrage: the average executive pay as compared with the average
factory worker pay. CEO pay by 102 major companies was about 40
times that of average full-time workers in the U.S. By the early
2000s, CEO pay averaged 367 times the pay of the average
worker.[6] In 2007, the ratio between CEOs and factory workers
was 344:1, while in Europe it was about 25:1.[7]
What can we, the American people, do? First, recognize that the
Democratic and Republican Parties are a democracy-destroying
political duopoly, which has joined forces in shafting the vast
majority of Americans, who are struggling every day to just get
by, while serving politicians' campaign contributors, including
Wall Street bankers, for-profit insurance companies, the
pharmaceutical industry, hedge fund managers, for-profit
colleges (many of which are owned by investment banks), and
anti-union forces. These Democrats and Republicans deregulated
the financial industry and looked the other way while financial
institutions and their officers engaged in wholesale fraud --
all of which led to the economic melt-down from which we are
still reeling, while the perpetrators are still lining their
pockets with multi-million dollar bonuses, derived from
government bail-outs.
They are the same duopoly that has caved to the fossil fuel
industry in failing to provide essential international
leadership to prevent the most catastrophic consequences of
climate change. They have become so craven that President Obama
even vetoed the EPA's effort to reduce the emission of ground
level ozone and has now paved the way for the southern leg of
the Keystone XL Pipeline and vastly expanded offshore oil
drilling.
They are the same duopoly that thinks so little of our democracy
that they have made it almost impossible for any new party or
independent candidate to get on several states' ballots -- and,
through their total control of the Presidential Debate
Commission, which hijacked the presidential debates from the
League of Women Voters, have prevented any non-plutocratic
voices from being heard by the electorate during presidential
debates.
In short, each of us can say...
"We're not going to take it any more. We have drawn our line -- and won't budge from it.
"We won't support anyone who disregards our Constitution and the rule of law."We won't support anyone who tortures, authorizes torture, or opposes accountability for those who torture.
"We won't support anyone who targets U.S. citizens for assassination.
"We won't support anyone who will not work to stop the insane and inhumane incarceration of 2.3 million people, many of them for non-violent offenses -- an incarceration rate far greater than any other nation on earth and which is applied with a vengeance toward African-Americans and Latinos.
"We won't support anyone who fails and refuses to face up to the need for rational, compassionate immigration reform.
"We won't support anyone who will not commit to provide our students with an equal opportunity to obtain a higher education and equip themselves to be competitive globally with students and employees in other nations.
"We won't support anyone who asserts the power to kidnap and indefinitely detain people, including U.S. citizens, without charges, trial, assistance of legal counsel, or right of habeas corpus -- perhaps the most subversive, anti-American stance ever taken by a Congress or a President in our nation's history.
"We won't support anyone who takes, or purports to authorize a president to take, our nation to war without a finding by Congress that war is justified -- and without compliance with the U.N. Charter, to which the U.S. is a signatory.
"We won't support anyone who allows the continuation of Bush's budget-busting tax breaks for the wealthy.
"We won't support anyone who makes it more difficult for working men and women to organize.
"We won't support anyone who continues to allow multi-national corporations to profit by depriving U.S. workers of their jobs while exporting millions of jobs with nearly slave conditions in other nations.
"We won't support anyone who refuses to implement programs like the Works Progress Administration to hire millions of people to build up our nation's rapidly deteriorating infrastructure.
"We won't support anyone who refuses to strengthen, rather than undermine, the safety nets provided by Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.
"We won't support anyone who fails to provide crucial leadership on climate change and a thriving, clean energy economy.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).