It’s Always Been a Class War: Between the aristocratic ruling class and the common people

[Better Believe It]

It’s Always Been a Class War
By: Glenn W. Smith
October 30, 2011

Whenever conservatives get caught with their hands in the till they shout, “Class Warfare!” at those of us who would like to stop their looting. Thinking this a negative, they forget, I guess, that the American democratic experiment was and is just that: a class war.

It has always been about equality vs. aristocracy. It was in the beginning, is now, and will always be. No one has described the class war and the American spirit of equality as well as Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood. He recognized equality as America’s home-grown radical philosophy.

Wood wrote:

A"s early as the 1780s the principal antagonists in the society were no longer patriots vs. courtiers but had become democrats v. aristocrats."

By any measure – political power, income distribution, educational opportunity, access to health care – it’s frighteningly clear that aristocratic anti-egalitarians have been winning. As the suffering caused by their anti-democratic movement becomes more widespread and widely seen, however, they grow ever more nervous. It’s not Wall Street we occupy so much as the fevered nightmares of an embattled elite. They wave their wands still, but the magic deserts them.

Read the full article at:

http://firedoglake.com/2011/10/30/its-always-been-a-class-war/

[DemOhio]

1. Democratic

Saying someone was in favor of democracy was a very big insult during the time of the founding fathers.

[Marazinia]

2. It's true, they were terrified of it

They stirred the people up to fight with radical pamphlets and lived in horror of a revolution of the people that they could not control and direct.

However, there are some things in our Constitution that argue that perhaps, on a conscious or subconscious level, some of the founders yearned for a truly free society. They just didn't have the guts to see it through then and there. And no one has ever had the guts to see it through since. Just a little piece at a time here and there, with the power structure essentially untouched.

Or maybe that's just optimism. Maybe the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights was never anything but a way to trick the people into thinking they had a say in their governing.