The
American Republican party is dedicated to exalting the power of owners at the
expense of citizens. It advocates neo-Feudalism and calls it democracy.
Democracy
elsewhere, including so far in Canada, instead defines the relationship between
citizen and state. Rights and obligations fall to the individual in their role
as citizen. I owe the wider community a share of whatever resources I momentarily
control in order to sustain the environment that makes acquisition of those
resources possible. Everyone benefits, me most of all, and I am free of control
by any other individual, including my employer. The work I do is contractual
and consensual, not coerced.
Taxes
pay a pre-existing debt; They were never mine. Their delivery is just a matter
of bookkeeping, not a choice I make to ‘give away’ anything that was ever ‘mine’.
I know that everyone around me is also paying their share. The political system
is just and open to anyone to participate.
Besides
providing rule of law and freeing me from personal domination, the state also fulfills
a larger public safety role. My food has been inspected. My roads are safe. I
have access to good medical care. Universities are sustained.
Americans,
on the other hand, seem to be recreating Feudalism. All rights belong to owners;
None to the penniless. Medical care is a favour that an employer might or might
not bestow on his powerless serfs. They have no alternative but to obey a
master who has this power of life and death over them, for that is what medical
care is.
People
who can’t afford lawyers end up in jail on arbitrary charges. Conviction not
only results in ridiculous lengths of incarceration, it also disenfranchises citizens
of their vote.
The
rich amplify their power election by election. The more the federal state is
weakened the more the rights of Americans as citizens are weakened.
This
is not a joke. It is the precursor to revolution. Republicans will inevitably
discover that no one rides the populist beast and that Feudal control is not a
sustainable system. Until the revolution that will sweep it away, Feudalism
will progressively starve the commonweal of resources, impoverishing skills and
opportunities, reducing the marketplace.
