The American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstadter

"Power naturally grows...because human passions are insatiable. But that power alone can grow which already is too great; that which is unchecked, that which has no equal power to control it." John Adams.  

"Wealth tends to corrupt the mind and to nourish its love of power, and to stimulate it to oppression. History proves this to be the spirit of the opulent." Gouverneur Morris at the Constitutional Convention. 11

Modern American folklore assumes that democracy and liberty are all but identical...But the Founding Fathers thought that the liberty with which they were most concerned was menaced by democracy.  In their minds liberty was linked not to democracy but to property. 13-14 

Among the many liberties, therefore, freedom to hold and dispose property is paramount. Democracy, unchecked rule by the masses, is sure to bring arbitrary redistribution of property, destroying the very essence of Liberty. 15

"Freedom for property would result in liberty for men--perhaps not for all men but at least for all worthy men.  Because men have different faculties and abilities, the Fathers believed, they acquire different amounts of property.  To protect property is only to protect men in the exercise of their natural faculties." 15

"...democracy never lasts long.  It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.  There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide" John Adams.

"Those who own the country ought to govern it" John Jay (Founding Father) "...to the Fathers this was simply a swift axiomatic statement of the stake-in-society theory of political rights..." 20

"Men like Hamilton could argue that manufactures ought to be promoted because they would enable the nation to use the labor of women and children, 'many of them at a tender age,' but Jefferson was outraged as such a view of humanity.  Hamilton schemed to get the children into factories; Jefferson planed school systems". 55

"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonius reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, to sacred to be touched.  They ascribe to the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.  I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it.  It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.  I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and institutions...But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand and hand with the progress of the human mind.  As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.  We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regime of their barbarous ancestors." Thomas Jefferson

 "As a nation we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.'  We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negros and foreigners and Catholics.'  When it comes to this,  I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty,--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base allow of hypocrisy." 131

Inasmuch as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labor has produced them.  But it has so happened, in all ages of the world, that some have labored, and other have without labor enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government."136

In 1860, where shoemakers were on strike: "I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New England under which laborers can strike when they want to, where they are not obliged to work under all circumstances, and are not tied down and obliged to labor whether you pay them or not! "137

"Had he [Lincoln] lived to seventy, he would have seen the generation brought up on self-help come into its own, build oppressive business corporations, and begin to close off those treasured opportunities for the little man.  Furthermore, he would have seen his own party become the jackal of the vested interests, placing the dollar far, far ahead of the man."  

"...men recognized that corporations had become indispensable in the business world, that it was folly to try to prohibit them, but that it was also folly to leave them without thorough-going control. Government must now interfere to protect labor, to subordinate the big corporation to the public welfare, and to shackle cunning and fraud. Theodore Roosevelt 293

‎"Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration...I wish to see labor organizations powerful" TR 301

 

 

25Capitalism 3.0 A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons by Peter Barns

"In 2005, a United Nations-sponsored research team reported that roughly 60 percent of the ecosystems that support life on earth are being used unsustainably." 25

"...capitalism as we know it is devouring creation.  It's living off nature's capital and calling it growth." 26

we need rest, relaxation, and time for companionship and creativity. 30

Capitalism 3.0 A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons

Capitalism 3.0 A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons

Education:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a791514138&fulltext=713240928

There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor i America

"There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America," by Philip Dray

"The right to property, to own and conduct a competaitive business--these were concepts held sacred--while the notion of an independent group of workers leveraging power, impacting economic and social policy, was not." 8

Note: What's the Matter with Kansas

by Thomas Frank

...if we are to understand the forces that have pulled us so far to the right, it is to Kansas that we must turn our attention [Frank's home].  The high priests of conservatism like to comfort themselves by insisting that it is the free market, that wise and benevolent god, that has ordained all the economic measures they have pressed on America and the world over the last few decades. But in truth it is the carefully cultivated derangement of places like Kansas that has propelled their movement along.  It is the culture war that gets the goods." 10

..god's holy hate 35

poverty is profitable: poverty makes stock go up and labor [cost] go down.  (Describing the unregulated corporate beef industry in rural Kansas. 55

"minister of the market" "high priest of capitalism" 80

The Kotch brothers: Koch Industries: the second largest privatly held company.  Koch's business is oil and the right wing propaganda industry: Dynasty founder is Fred Koch, who was a charter member of the John Birch Society; billionaire son Charles founded the libertarian Cato institute in 1977; another billionaire son, David, ran on the Libertarian ticket in 1980. Koch money props up "Reason" magazine, the Manhattan Institute, the Heartland Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, and the Democratic Leadership Council. 81

Conservative pundits like Limbaugh, Coutler, Hannity, O'Riley, with few exceptions don't talk about economic issues. Why, because the great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class?..you can hardly deride liberals as the societies "elite" or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world--the power that creates the nations real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican party as its personal sidearm." 128

"And this is the logical terminus of backlash [fundamentalist, right wing] reasoning.  When you have rejected all the accepted social science methods for understanding the way things work, when you can't talk strait about social class, when you can't acknowledge that free market forces mightn't not always be for the best, when you can't admit the validity of even the most basic historical truths, all you're left with are these blunt tools: journalists and sociologists and historians and musicians and photographers do what they do because they are liberals.  And liberals lie, Liberals cheat...Liberalism in not a product of social forces, it is a social force,  a jugernaut moving according to its own logic all its own, as rigid and mechanical as anything dreamed up by the Stalinists of yesterday."

"...the people on top know what they have to do to stay there, and in a pinch they can easily overlook the sweaty piety of the New Republican masses, the social conservatives who raise their voices in praise of Jesus but caste their votes to exault Caesar." 178

screed: ranting piece of writing.

Conservatism provides its followers with parallel universe...the most important similarity between backlash and mainstream commercial culture is that both refuse to think about capitalism critically.  Indeed, conservative populism's total erasure of the economic could only happen in a culture like ours where material politics have already been muted and where the economic has largely been replaced by ...pseudospiritual fulfillments [authenticity (identity of a "conservative" and victimization by "liberals", rebellion, the nobility of victim hood, individuality].  This is the basic lie of the backlash, the manipulative strategy that makes the whole senseless parade possible.  In all of its rejecting and nay-saying, it resolutely refuses to consider the assaults on its values, the insults, andthe Hollywood sneers are all products of capitalism as surely as are McDonald's hambergers and Beoing 737's. 242

Why shouldn't our culture get worse and worse , if making it worse will only cause the people who worsen it to grow wealthier and wealthier? 250

"The fever-dream of martydom that Kansas  follows today has every bit as much power as John Brown's dream of justice and human fraternity.  And even if the state must sacrifice it all, it's cities and its industry, its farms and its small townl, all its thoughts and all its doings--the brilliance of the mirage will not fade.  Kansas is ready to lead us singing into the apocalypse.  It invites us all to join in, to lay down our lives so that others might cash out at the top; to renounce forever our middle-American propserity in pursuit of a crimson fantasy of middle-American righteousness." 251