Constitution Revisionism
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
According to the New York Times, the US Constitution wasn’t “designed for a society with economic inequality” – precisely what it was designed for, the nation to be run by and for its privileged class exclusively.
Governance since the neoliberal 90s exacerbated things to today’s deplorable state. The greatest wealth disparity in the nation’s history exists, poverty its leading growth industry. Plutocracy, not democracy, defines things.
Ferdinand Lundberg described what he called “the great totem pole of American society,” America’s Constitution crafted by 55 self-serving figures – 39 alone signed it. Today we’d call them a Wall Street crowd.
They were bankers, merchants, traders, planters, judges, lawyers, politicians, smugglers, privateers and slave owners. “We the people” meant them, not us.
Their final product was no masterpiece of political architecture, far from it – the product of duplicitous wheeler-dealers and cronies, cutting the best deal for themselves, leaving ordinary Americans out of the picture entirely.
The supreme law of the land deters no administration or Congress from doing whatever they please, US federal courts most often compliant, especially the Supremes.
US politicians lie, connive, misinterpret and pretty much operate ad libitum, discharging their duties as they see fit for their own self-interest.
The Times: “Our Constitution was not built for a country with so much wealth concentrated at the very top nor for the threats that invariably accompany it: oligarchs and populist demagogues.”
Earlier day privileged individual weren’t oligarchs like today. True enough. Wealth concentration existed though nothing like today. Politics breeds demagoguery.
Aristotle said Athenian general Cleon “shouted on the public platform…used abusive language, and…spoke with his cloak girt around him…”
Modern demagogues are latter day versions of earlier ones.
The Times: “Our Constitution doesn’t mandate that only the wealthy can become senators. (It) doesn’t have structural checks and balances between economic classes: not between rich and poor, and certainly not between corporate interests and ordinary workers.”
Privileged Americans run things exclusively for themselves and interests they represent, ordinary ones left out entirely. The Senate is a millionaires club. Over half of congressional members are millionaires.
Trump’s billionaire cabinet is the wealthiest in US history.
The Times: The nation’s founders “didn’t pit class against class.”
Half of the 55 delegates to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention were slave owners, all of them privileged self-serving wheeler-dealers.
The “American people” had no say about their work. Women were considered homemakers and child-bearers alone, nothing else, suffrage denied them until August 1920 – nearly a century-and-a-half after the nation’s birth.
African Americans were property, not people until the 13th Amendment freed them (1865), 14th Amendment granted them citizenship (1968), and 15th Amendment gave them the right to vote (1870).
Jim Crow, its modern-day version, and wage slavery followed. America is a land of extreme inequality. Class warfare rages unchecked, fostered by its ruling class.
Genocide against Native Americans was the greatest in human history, exterminating about 100 million men, women and children, cultural genocide continuing today.
Jefferson believed the Constitution couldn’t stand the test of time, urging revisions every 20 years to make it relevant to the times.
It’s only been done through 27 amendments, the last one in 1992. Would revising or drafting a new Constitution matter?
America is governed by duplicitous politicians, not laws, serving powerful interests, what plutocracy and oligarchy are all about – what the NYT and other media scoundrels never explain.
VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].
My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.
