Some of my Taliban Republican critics take great pride in telling me that Benjamin Franklin urged the delegates of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to open their sessions with morning prayers.
But they fail to mention that the records show that the delegates refused to even debate the issue.
I usually ask them if they have read Franklin's statement about the proposed Constitution (which was adopted). Of course, he prophesied that this effort would fail: "There is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other."
The oil industry (including gas) has hijacked our government -- all three branches from presidency to Congress to the Supreme Court. The means have always been there as Franklin warned. It simply took greed plus ideology as the unifying umbrella, but the glue of the movement is delivering concrete rewards -- usually money -- to core constituencies.
Think of Enron, Wall Street, the hierarchy of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church, William Bennett; of Justice Scalia's son arguing before his unrecused father at the Supreme Court while unrecused Thomas sits silently by, his wife already at work for the approaching Bush government.
Think of the electoral college -- a piece of anti-democratic machinery -- that Franklin must have seen as a source of deepest corruption for the new Republic, as occurred in both 1876 and 2000.
Think, finally, of Scalia's son and Thomas' wife working for the Bush team as the supremes decided to leave votes uncounted in the 5-4 Bush vs. Gore political decision, a decision that most people were afraid to call by its correct name -- treason.
Before leaving Franklin's statement about "form of government," let us be cognizant of one of the prime facts of history: The market economy, like every other social order knowable to man or woman, liberates some of us in some ways, and enslaves some of us in other ways.
If it should turn out to be the only viable order in an ever more integrated, culturally homogeneous world, that would be no good reason either for rejoicing or despair.
Finally, there is no good reason for rejoicing about the Patriot Act which takes aim at the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and probably Eighth Amendments. This Bush-Ashcroft attack on the Bill of Rights was opposed by only one senator and 66 representatives. These members of Congress are the only patriots in Washington.
p.s. Will the Republican-owned media even allow a presidential election in 2004?
