The Founding Fathers wrought well. They produced a poliical structure that makes substantial cahnge through established channels not just difficult but impossible both in principle and in practice. Only twice in the nation's history has such change occurred. The first time rquired a bloody civil war to destroy the mainstay of what we might call The First Republic, crated to preserve the Slave Power. That Reublic, after a brief inter-regnum called Reconstruction, gave way to the Second Republic, as accurately portrayed in the film, Birth of a Nation. The second Republic's principle was a free hand for northern capital so long as it honored White Supremacy (maintained by terror) in the South.
The Third Republic collapsed in the '60s, when it became obvious to the ruling circles that it could be maintainded only by pure force, and as Barbara Jeanne Fields observes, when nothing is left bu force, nothing is left. Hence on the one hand the Civil Rights act, the (pseudo) War against Poverty, and, in the Nixon Administration a policy analogoues to that of Bismarck a century earlier: that is, certain 'progressive' measures (e.g. on disability) combined with a enhancement of repressive power under the guise of the War on Drugs. Since then this has been expanded through Carter's invocatoin of the foundation of all Conservative principle, "The World is Not Fair," the deliberate 'sabotage from iside'of government services (e.g. Amtrak and the Pos Office) and the impoverishment of state budgets through the elimination of federal subsidies and the anti-tax crusade. The result of all this was the full establishment of the Third Republic, grounded in extreme individuating (atomization) of the public expressed in the Lust for Security from illusory enemies (criminals, terrorists, and immigrants). And the fine work of the Foudners continues to make it impossible, not just difficult, to change this structure in any significant way through electoral politics. The mass of liberals nevertheless are held in ideological submission to their main enemy, the Democratic Party, by the Myth of Good Intentions spoiled by opportunism, incompetence, and cowardice of that party. This myth also allows the continued dominance of a still more fundamental barrier to change: the illusion (or delusion) that change requires the support of a majority of the citizens, despite the fact that in both instances of major change, the Civil War and The '60s change was brought about by a small minority so threatening stability that it required the ruling elements to make the stark choice of change or the impositono of sheer force. Now on pe-l, lbo-talk, and the marxism list all attention continues to be focused on the supposed "betrayal" or perfidy of the Democratic Party, when the actual barrier to change is the very structure of the u.s. state, which is impervious to popular opinion unless that opinion is expressed through the militancy of a minority that cannot be peacefully suppressed. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
