To Dave's and Dan's OP, I think this is very relevant about the demise of our
republic("to control The Majority strictly, as well as all others among the people, primarily to protect The Individual’s God-given, unalienable rights and therefore for the protection of the rights of The Minority, of all minorities, and the liberties of people in general")
Which is wrongly called a
democracy ("majority over man"), and may help "shed the chains" (see 14th Amendment, below) of our current coke/pepsi corporatist governance.
its a brief soapbox, then I'll go back to contemplating weighted vs. unweighted worms "in the zone".
We can handle big words, big concepts, need big attention spans (turn off the TV), big consequences (debt slavery for most americans) for ignoring it. This is where the "uneducated electorate" needs to pay attention. There is a strong streak of learned anti-intellectualism that's pervasive in our culture. I don't think that's an accident. But it is harmful to a national dialogue on how to weather the next decades.
http://www.tripzine.com/listing.php?id=corporate_metabolism"Individual Sovereignty
In 01861, the US Civil War erupted, ostensibly over the moral issue of slavery, but arguably fought over political and commercial issues: Northerners distrusted the Southern plantation model, convinced that it would not support the economic expansion required for their corporations.
Toward the close of the conflict, in 01864, President Lincoln sent a letter to Col. William F. Elkins, apprehending the war's true nature and eventual outcome: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, ... and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." Note that these words came from the man — one of the first notable Republican leaders — who had championed a bloody war effort to crush anti-corporate rebellion.
Slavery was abolished, and three years after the war ended, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution established "equal protection" under the law for all persons. Or was that "equal protection" for corporations? Within two decades, in 01886, the infamous Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (118 U.S. 394) case invoked the 14th Amendment to protect corporations as "legal persons" which in turn acted as agents and property of "natural persons". In other words, as constitutionally endorsed tulpas. This decision strengthened precedents established by Dartmouth v. Woodward to remove control of corporations from state/populace jurisdiction. In a haunting sense, the text of the decision also recalled the "natural man" quote by Hobbes.
Question #4: How much did the 14th Amendment actually get used to benefit African Americans?
Writing fifty years later in 01938, US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black echoed Lincoln's eleventh-hour realization: "...of the cases in this Court in which the Fourteenth Amendment was applied during the first fifty years after its adoption, less than one-half of one per cent. invoked it in protection of the negro race, and more than fifty per cent. asked that its benefits be extended to corporations... I do not believe that the Fourteenth Amendment had that purpose, nor that the people believed it had that purpose, nor that it should be construed as having that purpose."
There you have it folks. Thirty years after the ratification of the US Constitution, the original experiment in democracy was over. Defunct. Back to being worse off than they'd fared as colonists, the Americans got pissed off and started to war with each other. No matter what you learned in school (using textbooks produced by corporate publishers, no doubt) the war concerned slavery... It meant precious little about ending the subjugation of African Americans, since de facto civil rights would not even begin to happen for another hundred years! The war, however, meant much more about establishing and enforcing corporate slavery, which 118 U.S. 394 practically guaranteed. America launched into its heyday of trusts, robber barons, etc. Individual sovereignty was all but gone. In effect, referendum by the populace had itself become a risk externalized by the corporate form."
Ain't it provoking?
Tangled webs ain't in it, what?
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