Why the rich rule the land of the free

[dArKeR]

With two very rich white males likely to run for the US presidency, the 300-year-old American tradition of rule by the wealthy is still going strong

By Linda Colley
THE GUARDIAN , LONDON
Tuesday, Mar 16, 2004,Page 9

It's now certain. The next presidential election will be between two multimillionaire members of the US' hereditary elite.

For the Republicans, it will of course be President George W. Bush, son of the other president Bush who founded Zapata Petroleum, and an alumnus of Yale University and its elite student society, Skull and Bones. His Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry, is no closer in origins to the toiling masses. Kerry's ancestors have been involved in Massachusetts' politics since the 1600s. His first wife was worth US$300 million; his second wife's family fortune is even larger. And guess what his university background is: Yale and Skull and Bones.

That two such men should be battling to lead the quintessential land of opportunity strikes some Americans as odd.

"In Britain neither of these guys could lead a major party,"

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/03/16/2003102678

[whistle]

1. Here is a strong endorsement from the right.....

"Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past—I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble—recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an 'enemy of the people.' The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, 'clan liability.' In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished 'to the ninth degree': that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed."

- John Derbyshire, National Review, 02-15-01

Hummm, now does that mean that four more years of BushCo, could result in genocide of those the right-wing does not like?:evilfrown:

[teryang]

5. You mean like the Kennedys?

This is definitely the principle involved.

[A HERETIC I AM]

2. Why is it that the Taipei Times and The Guardian are so cutting edge....

but CNN told Democracy Now that they were going to "Stand down" on the story of Aristide's flight out of the Central African Republic?


Freedom of the press, indeed.

The mainstream media in this country should be tarred and feathered

[dArKeR]

3. Taipei Times is Abian. Everything that President Chen stands for.

Taipei Times has become one of world leaders of honesty. Taiwan is fee. Taiwan deserves to be free of the Communist Pigs of China! Taiwan was never a part of China. Read the facts not what lies CNN's Media Whore Mike Chinoy vommits.

[T_i_B]

4. I posted this in the GD: campaigns forum...

...a little while back, and it got a good reaction on there. Glad to see it in this forum dArKeR! :-)

This is my favourite bit. At the time in Britain we had the "rotten borough's" system and today you have soft money.

America's politics remain in some respects rooted in the 18th century. Its written constitution, after all, was drafted in 1787 by men who had rebelled against George III, but who still thought and behaved very much like 18th-century Britons. As a result, the US, for all its republicanism and rampant modernity, has preserved in aspic some political ticks and traditions that Britain itself has long since got rid of.

Thus when Americans wanted to prosecute Richard Nixon, they impeached him. Impeachment is an ancient legal device which the British, too, once employed against unworthy ministers. They no longer make use of it (perhaps they should?). But Americans have kept it. In much the same way, American electioneering is now closer in spirit and ritual to William Hogarth's brilliant caricatures of mid-18th-century elections than is Britain's own electoral politics.

In 21st-century America, as in Georgian Britain, elections are raucous, flamboyant, flag-waving, expensive, and sometimes ramshackle things. Some of Florida's difficulties in the last presidential elections, for instance, stemmed from the fact that - in the US - it is the different localities, not any central agency, that are responsible for electoral equipment and ballot forms. As a result, there is plenty of room on voting days for local variations and fiascos, and just occasionally for chicanery. Such cheerful chaos may seem shocking to modern-day Britons, whose elections are more staid and standardised, and very much cheaper. But Hogarth would have understood it.

[Miss Authoritiva]

6. Raucous, flamboyant, flag-waving, expensive, and ramshackle!

What a perfect quote! I always just called our election system screwy, but this line is much, much better. Thanks.

[Sugarbleus]

7. So very well stated!

Can I emigrate to your country on a political refugee status? lol

I ADORE the Brits command of language and their "sensibilities"...though I have watched parliment (et al) where the people get a bit riled and jocular over debates--I LOVE that too! Our congressional proceedings are way too sterile.

Yes, there is MUCH chicanery going on over here, alas.