DEMOCRACY DEMEANED IS DEMOCRACY DENIED

One of the saddest and most dangerous aspects of America today is that so many people — at both the elite and mass level — have simply given up on democracy and live their lives as if citizens should properly have no say in the actions taken by government in their name. Bush’s two main wars — the pre-emptive one against Iraq and the class war on behalf of the wealthy against the poor and middle class — would not be possible if Americans took democracy seriously. They would have known that the administration was dissembling about the nature of the threat posed by Saddam to the U.S. and they would understand that Bush is destroying the basis of middle-class prosperity for the nation and doing his damnedest to turn the country into Texas, with its largely privatized, beggar-thy-neighbor economy.
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