By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome
Thursday was the 4th of July, a day to celebrate The United States’ liberation from England and its monarchy and worldwide empire.
In the ensuing 250 years, the table has flipped with The United States dominating world order since World War II, and England settling back into the pack of world standing.
When the United States was established, it was an experiment in self-governance, something the leaders of long-established nations believed would be short-lived.
The sessions in Philadelphia to develop the fundamental principles and governmental structure included many heated disagreements, one of the most important being whether “the mob” — as founder Gouverneur Morris called them — should be among the governing or should governing be reserved only for the educated elite.
It was a difficult decision as the mob created havoc in Boston with the Tea Party and in Virginia objecting to the sugar and stamp acts imposed by the crown.
The rebellions to the north and south stood in contrast to the New York City merchants and businessmen who wanted order and security above all else, just as business seeks today.
Eventually Morris and a majority of the other founders of this nation hashing out the Constitution realized the mob had to be included in the decision-making process — i.e. voting — to have skin in the grand experiment.
At the heart of the nation’s founding was that all men are created equal, not some are inherently better than others because of their wealth or celebrity, however it took some time before equal applied legally to women and minorities.
The British Crown had viewed the colonies as a cash cow for its economy and the source of straight pine trees for the masts for its Naval war ships. The growing rebellion had to be squelched.
After the colonies had successfully separated from England, they slowly built their own economy, although the southern economy depended on slave labor for its prosperity and that eventually led to Civil War.
England continued to dominate the world order with its naval power but slowly the empire shrank and Britannia was no longer the heart of the world’s economy, giving way to America and the Soviet Union as they rose up as the old traditional powers receded.
In some respects the British Invasion of the early 60s was one last quest for English dominance.
America and its great experiment in self-governing was a shining star leading the world in industrial development and innovation that put a man on the moon more than 50 years ago after a major realignment during the Roosevelt administration.
Much like today. In the early part of the 20th Century the wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few who controlled the levers of power both economic and political, but the Great Depression put an end to what was a near oligarchy.
The labor movement helped create a thriving middle class who could afford to buy houses, new cars every three years and send their children to college so they did not have to do the heavy work of their parents.
However, some of the people made incredibly rich under the old system of cheap labor and stealing resources as the Koch industry did oil from Indian lands, wanted to keep fighting the Civil War as the federal courts ordered integrated schools.
Working with University of Chicago economist James Buchanan, who is known as the architect of the radical right, the nation’s dissatisfied billionaires developed a plan to create an oligarchy first by having Republicans take over state governments, both as a training ground and to gerrymander Congressional districts to be more favorable to right-wing Republicans.
The plan was successful and Republicans were able to control Congress although the vast majority of people did not approve of what they would attempt to do, end Social Security and the safety net for the poor established under the New Deal, eliminate the federal regulatory network that helped clean up the nation’s air and rivers, one of which was so polluted it caught fire.
The Cuyahoga River outside of Cleveland was so polluted it burned not that long ago in 1969, the same time when raw sewage flowed into the Merrimack River from Manchester homes and businesses.
The group believed they had the perfect man for the presidency in Ronald Reagan when he defeated sitting President Jimmy Carter in 1980, but he pushed back when they wanted him to end Social Security as a government program.
The grand prize of this scam on the American people has always been the court system and that has been going on since Reagan as well as the right/libertarians have been carefully picking their judges for key spots from the US Supreme Court to the lower courts to advance their legal and political agenda.
The last few weeks indicate how successful the oligarchy has been as the courts will now decide federal regulations not experts and presidents from now on will have immunity for official acts, which essentially makes them monarchs.
The Heritage Foundation funded by the Koch Foundation has developed a plan to do away with many of the rights Americans have come to rely on and institutions that protected people from bad actors like polluters and stock cheaters.
Much of this was helped along by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which opened the floodgates of untraceable dark money that flows into elections including here in New Hampshire, turning the once independent legislature into a mirror of southern states fighting the culture wars.
While the United States is pondering what a possible oligarchy might look like after perhaps the last 4th of July to celebrate the grand experiment, England took a step in the other direction on the same day.
After 14 years of conservative politics that led to the country’s exit from the European Union and impacting its economy, as well as years of scandals and lies from the likes of Boris Johnson, on July 4 British voters put the Labour Party in charge in a landslide.
The new British prime minister Keir Starmer said it was time to “reset” the country and the “work of change begins.”
He also reached out to the humbled Tory Party saying he wanted to return politics to “public service.”
In America the President of the Heritage Foundation that developed the 2025 plan to reform government under a new Trump administration, threatened those who disagree with him.
“We are in the process of taking this country back, we are in the process of the second American revolution, which will be bloodless if the left will allow it to be,” said Kevin Roberts.
Who will benefit from the second American Revolution Roberts talks about?
It certainly will not be the average American who wants to have a good paying job, a stable family life, a pathway for their children to receive a college education, when public schools are eliminated, along with Social Security and the economic safety net under the most vulnerable.
Roberts’ second American Revolution will enshrine the tyranny of the minority, not majority rules and that is 180 degrees from what the founding fathers established in Philadelphia 250 years ago.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.
Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.
