Krugman & Moyers: How the United States is becoming the Very System Our Founders Revolted Again

[JDPriestly]

20. People came here, worked for some time and were more easily able to buy property than we can

now. Later, people were able to buy land cheaply and then those who had been here a while and purchased land sold it to newcomers.

Some of my ancestors were here quite early. They were not oligarchs. Some of them fought in the early wars.

I base my information on the experiences of people in my family. Does your family have a history going back to the Revolution and before?

Owning property was not as difficult back then as it is now. Jefferson saw our country as a country of farmers. And in fact, we were to a great extent a nation of farmers. They were landowners but they were poor. Limiting voting to landowners did not disenfranchise as many Americans as it would today.

"After declaring independence on July 4, 1776, each former English colony wrote a state constitution. About half the states attempted to reform their voting procedures. The trend in these states was to do away with the freehold requirement in favor of granting all taxpaying, free, adult males the right to vote. Since few men escaped paying taxes of some sort, suffrage (the right to vote) expanded in these states. Vermont's constitution went even further in 1777 when it became the first state to grant universal manhood suffrage (i.e., all adult males could vote). Some states also abolished religious tests for voting. It was in New Jersey that an apparently accidental phrase in the new state constitution permitted women to vote in substantial numbers for the first time in American history."

http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-8-1-b-who-voted-in-early-america

Have you ever visited the log cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born? Any of the really early sites that commemorate the pioneers in our country? They did not live in huge, wealthy homes.

Jefferson built Monticello. He was an architect. Monticello is beautiful, but it does not compare to the great houses and castles of Europe. Jefferson was accepted in France, but in this country he did not live in a palace as did many in the French aristocracy, the oligarchy of that period.

George Washington was wealthy and of course had served in the British military. He might qualify as an oligarch. But at Valley Forge, he chose Thomas Paine to rally public support and inspire people to help the revolutionary cause and encourage the soldiers to fight well. Thomas Paine was not an oligarch.

Here are some quotes from Thomas Paine's Common Sense:


“One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.”
― Thomas Paine, Common Sense


“Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.”
― Thomas Paine, Common Sense

“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying of a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is”
― Thomas Paine, Common Sense

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2548496-common-sense

http://www.shmoop.com/american-revolution/thomas-paine.html

Benjamin Franklin was born poor. In addition to his newspaper, he was a postmaster. He was not an oligarch.

There were some wealthy people involved in starting this country. But mostly the soldiers, the revolutionaries, were country folks who were fighting to have a fair economic system, resisting the corporation of the day, the East India Company which was the symbol and tool of the British oligarchs and monarchy.

I don't think you can say we started as an oligarchy. Many we would classify as members of the oligarchy supported the British crown and were dispossessed and left the US after the Revolution.


Thomas