Hightower -- America's Leaders Are Small, but Americans Are Not

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/14-1

"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."

What a paragraph! Whatever happened to that BIG idea of America — the creation of a society that embraces and fosters such egalitarian values as justice, tranquility, common effort, the welfare of all and liberty?

We know, of course, that our nation has never attained the fullness of this ideal, but over the decades, generation after generation has at least strived to get closer to it — and made impressive progress. But today, some 224 years after the penning of the preamble, America's corporate-financial-political establishment is insisting that it's no longer possible or even desirable to pursue those democratic ideals that make our country important — and make it work.

What's happened is that, from Wall Street to Washington, we now have too many 5-watt bulbs sitting in 100-watt sockets. As a result of our leaders' dimness, America's uniting and constructive ethic of "We're all in this together" and "Together we can" is being supplanted by a shriveled, dispiriting ethic that exalts plutocratic selfishness and scorns the public interest as intrusive, wasteful, ideologically impure and morally ruinous. They're pushing us toward a forbidding Kochian jungle in which there is no "we" — money rules, everyone's on their own, and such matters as justice, general welfare, tranquility and posterity are none of society's damned business.

More at the link --

[Vincardog]

1. Got it in one