Reply #142: why have a government?

[William Z. Foster]

Why have any government at all?

Your argument undermines and sabotages the very concept of government, the purpose of government. The same logic you are using here could be applied in every case. There would be no purpose for government anywhere - other than as a police force to keep us all in line for the benefit of the corporations, and as an occasional referee between two competing corporations that were having a dispute.

It has been shocking to watch so many Democrats abandoning the traditional positions of the party, the principles and ideals of the political left and liberalism and progressive politics. But now people are making arguments that take us back much farther than that. Monarchies were more progressive than what people are advocating regarding BP and the disaster in the Gulf.

If people have given up on these two statements, I do think all is lost. Given up? It is worse than that. The last few days we have people contradicting and arguing against the sentiments in these two statements.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

We are seeing Democrats who are now arguing in favor of some sort of corporate neo-feudalism.