TR busted trusts but wasn't the first American icon to oppose plutocracy.
If you agree with Gore Vidal that “only corporate America enjoys representation by the Congresses and presidents that it pays for,” then your average July 4th quote is going to ring pretty hollow.
“My patriotic heart beats red, white, and blue” or “And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free” — why do people bother emailing this kind of stuff at all anymore?
But whether you agree with Dr Johnson about patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel or whether you find inspiring examples of freedom and integrity in the American past, maybe this year you should arm yourself with a different kind of Independence Day quote.
To that end, we provide quips from the brave, the wise and the gadfly, all on the topic of freedom and its perversion by big corporations. (Want more quotes on corporations? Check out Bill Huston’s extensive list).
Why pick on corporations? Because we think that their plutocratic control of government in the US and beyond is the biggest single obstacle preventing the peoples of the world from getting the clean energy and local economies that we need to prepare for peak oil and fight climate change.
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson
I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
James Madison, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788
Unless you become more watchful in your states and check the spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that…the control over your dearest interests has passed into the hands of these corporations.
Andrew Jackson
Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.
Henry David Thoreau
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and cause me to tremble for safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic destroyed.
Abraham Lincoln, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
Oscar Wilde
As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people,… are fast becoming the people’s masters.
Grover Cleveland, address to Congress, December 3, 1888
[W]e now hold, that a corporation is not a citizen within the meaning of the constitutional provision that ‘the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.’
Blake v. McClung, 172 U.S. 239 (1898)
I again recommend a law prohibiting all corporations from contributing to the campaign expenses of any party….Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly.
Theodore Roosevelt, address to Congress, December 3, 1906
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance.
Woodrow Wilson
D.H. Lawrence
It would be easy for us, if we do not learn to understand the world and appreciate the rights, privileges and duties of all other countries and peoples, to represent in our power the same danger to the world that Fascism did.
Ernest Hemingway
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed – else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Certainly when the fourteenth amendment was submitted for approval, the people were not told that ratifying an amendment granting new and revolutionary rights to corporations and were not told that it was intended to remove corporations in any fashion from the control of the state governments. The fourteenth followed the freedom of a race from slavery. Corporations have neither race or color.
Hugo Black
Multinational corporations do control. They control the politicians. They control the media. They control the pattern of consumption, entertainment, thinking. They’re destroying the planet and laying the foundation for violent outbursts and racial division.
Jerry Brown
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.
Mario Savio
The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That’s the only difference.
Ralph Nader
Punk is not dead. Punk will only die when corporations can exploit and mass produce it.
Jello Biafra
April is tax month. If you are having trouble filing your taxes, then you should hire an accountant. They’ll give you the same advice that they’ve given hundreds of corporations – taxes are for douche bags.
Ed Helms
I used to be a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt for this reason (anti-trust), but recently having read “The Imperial Cruise”, I have learned that most of what he did was in the name of the “Teutonic Right”: that he believed hard in the white/Christian supremacy and that “following the sun” was the destiny of those who were endowed by God to “civilize” the “barbarians”. He set up Japan to be our surrogate white folk in Asia, and the eventual result was WWII.
And don’t forget basic message of the Declaration of Independence, which asserts that the only legitimate reason to have a government is to secure the fundamental rights to life liberty, and the pursuit if happiness of the people being governed. If the people being governed decide a government is not fulfilling that sole purpose for its existence, if, in the words of the Declaration, “any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” That is our fundamental right and freedom as Americans – the right to govern ourselves in ways that seem to us most likely to ensure our freedom to create the best, happiest lives we can. And that is something to celebrate. And then put into action.
On Independence Day in the year 2011, any clear-thinking, fair-minded assessment of the government we have now, legally authorized by the 1789 Constitution and its subsequent interpretations by the Supreme Court, leads to the conclusion that it has failed in its mandated purpose to secure the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for a democratic majority of the people being governed. America is undeniably a plutocracy, a government and society run by and for the wealthy, a minority ruling class that wields and concentrates power through the workings of money (i.e., capitalism). America is not now and probably never really was the democracy demanded by the Declaration. So let’s live the Declaration! Let’s enact the Declared right of the people to “throw off” the plutocratic government of the 1789 Constitution, and START ANEW! Let’s start “laying a foundation of principles and organizing ourselves in ways that seem most likely to effect our safety and happiness” and “providing new guards for our future security.” And the Declaration does not, and indeed could not, put any limitations on our freedom to create new governments, new societies, new ways of life. As the Declaration drafters implicitly understood, our ability to create new ways of life is our fundamental human freedom. Everything else derives from the radical human freedom to create society.
It’s good to remember that the Declaration of Independence did assert the principle of government for the benefit of the people, saying that any other kind of govt was invalid. Calls for a “Second American Revolution” have become routine by now. But maybe we need to take the idea seriously now, as it’s become so clear that our current plutocracy is almost totally unresponsive to the needs of anyone besides big corporations.
If we want to get a new form of govt, I’m interested to hear how you would do it!
Hi Erik —
It seems to me there are two basic approaches to creating a more democratic society and government. One would be “reform” of the current system with a Constitutional Convention aiming to frame a new national government responsive to the needs of the democratic majority, and specifically organized to resist being captured by minority interests or factions. One possible way to do this is through multi-party proportional representation. In a law school seminar called The Law of American Democracy, I developed a modest proposal for a reformed, USA-style government that would be more representative and democratic through (among other things) redrawn federal districts electing representatives with cumulative and instant runoff voting.
But to be honest, I think such reform would be too difficult to achieve because it requires taking power from the plutocratic overclass whose control of our society, particularly through the media, makes that virtually impossible. The other, ultimately more promising and more principled alternative is for like-minded people to start creating their own new societies and systems of governance. This approach accords with the forward-thinking character of the Transition movement. Although we can’t know in advance what free people living democratically will come up with, it seems clear that a crucial starting point is establishing democratic ways of life in localized communities that to some significant extent are able to take care of themselves. Like others, I can envision a proliferation of localized, post-nation-state polities of like-minded people existing amid other such groups as well as the chaotic wreckage of modernity. Some of these will be rural, some urban, some suburban. I would hope and expect that many or some of these localized democratic communities would maintain beneficial relations with others, and that translocal communities of like minded individuals would criss-cross and create interrelations among local communities. These farther-flung communities of interest will probably include groups akin to guilds that will maintain and develop high-technology tools like computers and the internet that will help tie local communities together into larger webs of association.
But importantly, this true democracy alternative of proliferating neopublics is not a state (in the sense of stasis or some particular form), so it’s not particularly helpful to lay out a specific vision of ‘how things should be’; rather true democracy is a never-ending process of people taking responsibility for themselves as individuals and communities and using their freedom to create the best societies and lives that can at any given moment. That said, the beginning of the path to true democracy, the basic principles that define freedom and responsibility, have been lying in plain view since the time of cave painters [ http://democracylight.blogspot.com/2011/04/path-to-utopia-of-true-democracy.html ]. We just have to start living those principles with others forging the same path. This kind of ‘revolution’ will be more like the Mayan (in which the people dispersed into re-localized communities as the centralized infrastructure that allowed a ruling minority to control society faded away) than the French (where the rebels chopped off the king’s head and purported to more or less replace him with themselves). And it will be rooted in the fundamental freedom of people to govern themselves inscribed in the Declaration of Independence, which is why the Fourth of July – Independence Day – has become my favorite holiday!
Art — I like your thinking here. The local approach fits in well with the Transition movement, as does the humility of not saying how it must be for every community, but to let them figure it out for themselves. And I love your ending, about how July 4 has become your favorite holiday.
I think our readers would find your thoughts provocative. Would you allow us to run your comments here as an article?
Sure Erik — I’d be honored!