JEFF FAUX discusses the long decline that awaits the U.S., our failure to see what's in front of us, the need for a constitutional amendment to limit the "personhood" of corporations, and more. ~ Ilene
Excerpts:
The widespread belief among Americans that our country is “exceptional” is not unique. All countries, like all human beings, are exceptional in the sense of being different from one another. But the assumption of 200-plus years of success intoxicates, and it will take a while to sober up.
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The United States as a country will obviously survive almost any conceivable economic hard times. Given its level of development and size, even as its relative rankings decline, the United States will continue to have one of the world’s largest economies. The disconnect between the interests of the nation’s citizens and its economic elite will accelerate the decline, but the decline will occur over decades. It took more than three centuries for Rome to fall, and a century for the British to drop to the second tier of world powers. In any practical sense, the United States is immortal.
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In just about 10 minutes of serious political discussion with other Americans about what is wrong with our country, you will most likely get to the bottom-line answer: the pervasive corruption of our politics by money. The vast majority of Americans believe that money corrupts and prevents the government from serving the public’s needs. After the Supreme Court handed down its Citizens United decision, a Washington Post-ABC poll reported that at least 80 percent of Americans disagreed with it, including 76 percent of Republicans. No matter; neither party’s leadership is about to change this system.
The root problem is the way the court has interpreted the Constitution, and this is not just the case with the Roberts Court. Since 1886 with its Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad ruling, the Supreme Court has been providing corporations with the rights of individual human beings that were neither contemplated by the Founding Fathers nor supported by the majority of Americans.
The solution, therefore, is a constitutional amendment establishing once and for all that corporations do not have the political rights of, in the language of the court, “persons” and mandating hard limits on campaign spending. Unlike the efforts of the radical Right to amend the Constitution over issues that are irrelevant to the process of governance such as abortion, flag burning, gay marriage, or prayer in the schools, regulating the money in politics is truly an important constitutional question.
Full article: In the Twilight of Empire – In These Times.
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