Bernie On NPR "On Point"... link to podcast here
Last edited Thu Dec 22, 2016, 12:52 PM - Edit history (1)
Sorry for the short notice
http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2016/12/22/future-democratic-party-trump
Listen live now... or to the podcast later
= new reply since forum marked as read
I love Bernie... but Bernie doesn't get it. Almost everything he most rails against... growing corporate power, grotesque wealth inequality, and inability for the US to deal with climate change, etc arguably has its roots in an antidemocratic federal system designed for class warfare (Madison's "opulent of the minority"
and a system designed to give elites a veto over the People at every turn... including the very Senate Bernie is in which is perhaps the most antidemocratic body on the planet. There are reasons the US remains so different from more enlightened industrial democracies... and this is it.
MADISON: The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa, or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge of the wants or feelings of the day laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. The landed interest, at present, is prevalent; but in process of time, when we approximate to the states and kingdoms of Europe; when the number of landholders shall be comparatively small, through the various means of trade and manufactures, will not the landed interest be overbalanced in future elections, and unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be jsut, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability. Various have been the propositions; but my opinion is, the longer they continue in office, the better will these views be answered.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/yates.asp
