“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are rich and well-born, the other, the mass of the people . . . The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right . . . Give, therefore, to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second and, as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.”

        The cold, aristocratic superiority expressed by Hamilton and his Federalists was rejected by the electorate when they sent Jefferson to the White House in 1800. The Federalists then, with their power centered among New England’s elite, were largely destroyed by their resistance to The War Of 1812, as they defended their shipping interests at the expense of national sovereignty. But the energy and ambition of the industrialists were inexhaustible and they gave their vision of the future a new, kinder, more ingratiating face under the mantle of the Republican Party. Its most persuasive champion after The War Of 1812 was Henry Clay of Kentucky, who reshaped the elite’s agenda to appeal to the expansionist West, emerging as its first great political leader. Another leader was John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, considered by some to be a monarchist. The Conservatives had other allies in resisting the power of the masses as well. For twenty-five years, John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,  made the judiciary an impregnable fortress against the vagaries of popular government, while religion was enlisted by the elite to reconcile the lower classes to inequality and to bind them to unquestioning obedience to the laws, no matter how oppressive. The alliance between property, law and religion would seem to have been invincible.

        But the powerful inevitably seek to increase their power at the expense of the liberty of the helpless; the greedy their wealth from the pockets of patriots. The small group in Washington who controlled the government had succumbed to temptation and to arrogance, just as the Bush gang are doing today. In his first State Of The Union Message to Congress in 1825, John Quincy Adams said that Congress must not give the rest of the world the impression, “that we are palsied by the will of our constituents.” This denial of the rights of the majority was quickly disputed by his opponents. Andrew Jackson believed that freedom’s only defense was the virtue of the people. He became dedicated to the need for reform and a movement toward “Jacksonian Democracy” began in Tennessee which was to change American political history. The perception by some that the government had been stolen by a small cabal of politicians led to the conclusion that both constitutional government and liberty were in jeopardy and The Democratic Party had been born. John C. Calhoun wrote to Ole Hickory, “An issue has been fairly made, as it seems to me, between power and liberty.”

        During the presidential campaign of 1828, his opponents tried to label him a "jackass" for his populist views and his slogan, "Let the people rule." Jackson, however, turned their slander to his own advantage by using the donkey on his campaign posters. After his election, the donkey was used to represent Jackson's stubbornness when he vetoed re-chartering the National Bank, a bill benefiting, primarily, bank owners. Even though his electorate, like Jefferson’s, was made up exclusively of white, male property owners, the Democrats provided the philosophy of inclusion which has extended suffrage today to virtually all Americans. When the civil rights movement began in the 1960s, some southern Democrats, who saw themselves as superior to Black Americans, left the Democratic Party, an event which merely confirmed Democratic principles. These bigots, still claiming Christian values, joined the Republican Party. But, since 1824, the Democratic Party has always represented the alternative, a concerted, persistent dedication to identify and to enforce the will of those masses whom Hamilton feared and despised, while protecting oppressed minorities.

        But, in spite of the efforts of many down through the centuries, nothing has really changed.  There have always been, there are now, and there will always be greedy, corrupt men in all political parties who will do anything to achieve wealth and power. While ruthless manipulators kill innocent children in Ulster, greedy oil barons have used a corrupt court system to seize control of our government here in The United States, sending American and British boys to die in Iraq so that American and British oil companies can dominate the third largest petroleum reserves in the world, excluding French, German, Russian and other competitors from participating in the profits of the rebuilding process, and while their subsidiary companies, like Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown & Root, rip off American taxpayers with billion dollar no-bid contracts and millions of dollars in fraudulent over charges, all benefiting  George Bush, Dick Cheney, British aristocrats and their cronies.  American and British citizens are placed in the untenable position that if they protest the tyranny of their own governments against a sovereign people, they will be labeled as unpatriotic and subjected to vengeance, just as Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his innocent wife, Valorie Plame, were.

        Not satisfied with these profits derived from lying, cheating and exploiting taxpayers, the oil barons have attacked the people as consumers as well, increasing gasoline, heating oil and natural gas prices and profits, while Bush and his gang sit complacently, counting the obscene increase in theirs and their relatives' and cronies' stock dividends, (Exxon just reported a quarterly dividend of 10 billion dollars), denying culpability because their assets are safely ensconced in blind trusts until they leave office.  Their false claims that petroleum prices are controlled by market forces ring hollowly to anyone, like myself, who has worked in the petroleum industry.  The oil barons control every facet of petroleum production, transportation, refining and distribution and, in spite of their smoke and mirrors, they do fix prices, as well as everything else that influences their profits.  There is no scarcity of crude oil and the lack of refining capacity is due only to decisions by the oil barons who are interested only in profits, not in the needs of the nation. During the Carter Administration of the 1970s, they created gas lines and high profits by shutting off production of crude oil, this time they plead lack of refining capacity.  The market forces they cite involve only one oil company bidding against another oil company for a particular ship load of crude on the spot market, which transaction has absolutely nothing to do with what consumers pay at the pump.  Nevertheless, on October 28, Melanie Hobson, economic analyst for ABC-TV News, on the Good Morning America show, strongly defended the oil industry, saying that price fluctuations were entirely due to market forces.  Humbug!  In the 1970s, as a member of the North Carolina Petroleum Council's speakers bureau, I was given a script to use which declared that the world was running out of oil.  To the contrary, we had gas lines because the oil companies had conspired to shut off the oil wells.  They made a liar out of me and, after they got rid of Jimmy Carter, they turned them back on.  On November 9, Lee Raymond, Chairman of The Board of Exxon/Mobil, testifying before Congress, said that "We must pay the world market price for oil."  That is a blatant lie.  The major oil companies set  the world price for oil, using their dominance of OPEC as their instrument. You can not believe what big business says, or that they will protect your interests.  This is true of oil companies, media giants, or any other unregulated corporation.

        The new aristocrats also like to prey on the helpless, like the elderly who are easy "marks," while they share the wealth among their cronies, such as Senate Majority Leader, Doctor Bill Frist.  The Bush Administration made a great fanfare in December, 2005 of announcing the largest increase in Social Security benefits in history, 4.1%, or about $30 per person, per month (borrowed money which will have to be repaid by our grandchildren, due to Bush's irresponsible deficits).  But only two weeks earlier, SS beneficiaries had quietly received notice that their Medicare premiums would increase by more than $20 per month, so that greedy pharmaceutical companies, rich doctors, hospitals and medical insurance companies, not Social Security beneficiaries, will get two thirds of the benefit increase, leaving beneficiaries to pay $3.00 per gallon for gasoline and rising consumer prices out of the $10 per month increase that is left to them.  And if the beneficiaries sign up for the new Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage, that premium will get the rest of their increase. Aren't Republicans clever?

        These are only two prominent examples of how Republicans favor the rich and victimize the poor and helpless.  During Census 2000, Federal employees of the Census Bureau, mostly older or retired workers, were required to work overtime without pay (not without overtime pay, but without any pay at all for their overtime hours).  The Secretary of Commerce, Donald Evans, used this practice as a method to stay within his budget, knowing that his policy violated wage and hour laws. When, as a supervisor, I complained on behalf of my students, I was fired.  Federal immigration laws are not adequately enforced because corporations and the wealthy benefit from lower costs for workers, while American blue-collar workers are forced to work for lower wages because of competition from illegal immigrants.  Just a few days ago, on October 19, 2005, the Republicans again defeated an increase in the minimum wage introduced by Democrats.  Federal agencies, from FEMA to the Defense Department failed to act quickly in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita because most of the victims were poor and black, while George Bush was described as "disengaged."  Deregulation of corporations and tax cuts for the rich are increased, while Bush rings up record deficits, shifting wealth to the rich and the national debt to the poor, as consumption taxes that unfairly penalize the poor are substituted for income taxes. State lotteries, like Tennessee's, aid the Republicans, since it is the poor who spend their meager incomes on lottery tickets, in the false hope of bettering themselves, while the proceeds fund education, relieving high income taxpayers of the responsibility.  Courts inevitably favor corporations in civil litigation.  Civil courts have been reduced to a matter of who can afford the best attorneys, effectively denying access to the courts for the poor, and even for the middle class.  And don't even think about bidding on government contracts, or getting any other federal job if you are not a loyal Republican.

        Ronald Reagan made his mark on history as the only American president of Gaelic descent to betray the Democratic Party.  He sold his soul to big business and became a Republican in exchange for being made president, giving us "Reaganomics" which deregulated corporations and undid a hundred and fifty years of Democratic efforts to bring greedy corporations under control.  According to biographer Richard Reeves, Reagan believed, like Hamilton, that the rich were entitled to keep their wealth, and that the poor deserved their lot.  As one result, the Tennessee law which restricted banks to operating within one county was repealed.  When I was growing up, every county had three or four banks, they depended on their neighbors for their business, and so you knew your banker, you went to school and church with him or his children and you were assured of fair treatment by your bank, which could ill afford the negative local publicity from any unethical practice.  But after deregulation, bigger banks bought smaller ones until now there are less than a dozen banks in the state, where formerly there were hundreds.  They no longer have a reason to fear the judgment of their depositors, since they are now so large, so rich and have such lobbying power that individuals are at their mercy.  When First Citizens Bank of North Carolina defrauded me to promote the personal agenda of Regional Vice President Fenton Cunningham, I didn't have a chance to defend myself.  I filed suit, only to have my attorney be forced to withdraw because of a trumped up claim by the bank of conflict of interest.  Then, each of the six attorneys I subsequently hired to represent me was subverted, one after the other, by the bank. After finally taking over my case "pro-se" and obtaining proof of both intrinsic and extrinsic fraud by the bank, I found that Senior Superior Court Judge Zorro Guice had been subverted as well.  In a summary judgment hearing, I presented a witness to the bank's fraud and perjury, which was not refuted by the bank's eight attorneys present in court that morning.  I then asked for judgment.  Judge Guice responded by saying he didn't have time to hear my motion, that he had to eat lunch and that he had other cases scheduled for the afternoon.  Two weeks later, called to a motions hearing on some innocuous motions brought by the bank, before a different judge, without any notice of a new summary judgment hearing or, in fact, any further hearing, the presiding judge looked around and saw that my witnesses were not present and preemptively declared summary judgment against me.  The appeals courts, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, refused to hear my appeals.  On the strength of this injustice, my home was taken from me, I was evicted, I lost my family and my life's savings. But the most important consequence of Reaganomics is that, not only are rich corporations now above the law, but courts no longer protect individual citizens from corporate malfeasance.

        Perhaps the most egregious example of Republican corruption is the California utility rate scandal.  Kenneth Lay, Chairman of the Board of Houston based Enron Corporation, was the largest individual contributor to George Bush's presidential campaign ($300,000).  They were close personal friends and golf buddies.  Soon after the election, Lay's corporation began a campaign of its own, to defraud the utility rate payers of California, a Democratic state, by creating a false shortage of electricity so that rates could be increased to astronomical levels.  The Bush Administration cooperated by not taking any action to protect Californians from the scam.  But eventually, the fraud was revealed by an honest employee within the corporation, even though the media was very kind to Enron, a major advertiser, playing down the scandal.

        But maybe even worse was Bush's fellow Texan, Republican congressional leader, Tom DeLay's takeover of the Texas Legislature, using illegal corporate money to elect Republican legislators to replace Democrats.  His legislators then used their new majority to redistrict the state, giving Texas six new Republican congressmen, enough to guarantee control of The United States House Of Representatives. The Republicans, like the aristocrats in Britain, control the media because rich corporations buy most of the advertising. In Britain they control the throne as well, or is it the converse?  Republican corruption, from Watergate, to Iran/Contra, to Republican lies about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction aggressively reshape our society. Republicans make no claim to represent a majority of Americans, preferring to manipulate the electoral process to prevent popular government.  And so, what is to be done?

        1.  Vote!  The best justification for a political party is that it represents the majority of society.  Don't let the Republicans (or aristocrats) talk you out of voting.  It is a well established Republican strategy to give you reasons not to participate.  Vote in every election.  There are times when you get to vote for a candidate you like, times to vote against a candidate who is unacceptable, other times when you can stand up for your party and still other times when you can only remind your own party that you are a player who needs to be listened to.

        2.  Show up!  At party rallies, as a volunteer at the polls, in demonstrations for candidates or issues you support, and to protest infringement upon citizen's rights.  Republicans won't bother.  Rather, they rely on paid surrogates to work their will. Politicians pay attention to those who show up because they are known to vote.  So speak out, as Joseph Wilson did.  Even though it takes moral courage to be a patriot, its' worth it.  If the Wilsons had not spoken out, the Republican conspiracy to take us to war would not have been exposed.  The Wilsons have lost income from Republican reprisals, but they have gained the gratitude of the nation.

        3.  Be informed.  Take the time to study issues introduced by every candidate, especially on the local level.  National candidates often formulate issues based on polling data, but local candidates often run for office because of single issues to which they are committed.  In either case, it is important to vote intelligently.

        4.  Know what is important.  You should shape your political philosophy around what you consider to be important for the welfare of your country, now and in the future.  Develop a picture in your mind of your society as it ought to be a hundred years from now, of what kind of society you want for your children.  This was what the framers of the Constitution did, leaving us a legacy unique in history.

        5.  Don't become obsessed with one issue.  Environment, morality and equality of opportunity are all important, but so are control of greedy corporations, peace, democracy, and the rule of law.  We need to address all these issues and a thousand more.  Democratic government is the art of compromise to replace conflict.  That is what is needed in Ulster now. Obsession with single issues divides Democrats and plays into the hands of Republicans.  Good government addresses the problems of the majority most often, and the issues of minorities when necessary.  But remember, if I am to enjoy the right of freedom of religion, I must be willing to guarantee your right to disagree with me. Otherwise, the prevailing view will not be a right, but merely a privilege that can be taken away by anyone in power, likely resulting in a state religion.  For, so long as anyone in society can be denied any right, no one enjoys that right, but merely a privilege.  No one knows this better than the Irish and Scots.

        6.  Make sure that all the ballots are counted. It has been proven that George Bush became president because his brother Jeb and the Florida Republican Party, supported by the Republican majority on The United States Supreme Court, were able to keep Florida Democratic votes from being cast and counted .

        Note: For the edification of our cousins outside the U.S., and for some inside, a "Yellar Dawg Democrat" is a person who believes that even a yellow dog, if running on the Democratic ticket, is more qualified for office than any Republican.

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