Hostile Takeover Of America

[Levi Gamin]

I have site to recommend about what John Q. Adams called 'stockjobbers' and his disgust that they had taken over the democratic society he and our other forefathers has attempted to establish. Please see this website (http://www.orbstandard.com/News/Lendman/Lendman_Comments_On_Sirotas_Hostile_Takeover.html) .

I think it's a damned shame that America was taken over by corporate interest, so long ago that even John Adams was still around to lament it, and that Americans these days are still largely unaware of it and just believe the crap they were programed when they were still in elementary school.

[Severian]

I think the nostalgia for early U.S. democracy is mostly displaced.

Certainly none of the "Founding Fathers" intended for working people - or "the rabble" as they were more likely to call us - to have any significant voice in government. They were quite frank about this, and their intent that "checks and balances" would keep the rabble's will from being imposed on the men of property who'd serve in the high offices of the republic.

And besides, many of them were plantation- and slave-owners (though not John Q. Adams). Give me a stock-jobber any day of the week; the triumph of capital over the planters was a huge step forward for humanity.

And BTW, is that quote even authentic?

[Global_Justice]

didn't the great american foretfathers kill millions of indians :unsure:

[Janus]

didn't the great american foretfathers kill millions of indians
That was the work of later generations though the Founders definitely played a part by establishing the state in the first place.

Sev., I definitely agree with you. The Founding Fathers were working in their own interests, the revolution was basically a bourgeois coup.

[KC]

The constitution was about protecting property, and not individual rights or freedoms. (http://cyberjournal.org/authors/fresia/)

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27 2006, 06:47 PM
Sev., I definitely agree with you. The Founding Fathers were working in their own interests, the revolution was basically a bourgeois coup.
But that's not what I'm saying. It was a bourgeois revolution, and a progressive one - though incomplete. There's even some good to be said of the Constitution over the Articles of Confederation - it reflected the merchants' interests more than anyone's.

There's even a grain of truth - just a grain - to the nostalgic view. Widespread small property ownership did provide an economic basis for a bourgeois democracy more vital than the present one.

I recommend a book titled "America's Revolutionary Heritage", by George Novack, for details.