Democracy is more than a form of government;

democracy is the purpose of government.​

 

Discussion of strategy among progressives sometimes reflects a tension between a strategy emphasizing “democracy” and one centering economic policies (often cast as “kitchen-table issues”).

 

But democracy — at least, a real democracy worth its salt — is more than a set of structural and procedural safeguards, and even more than representative government itself.  The beating heart of American Democracy, worked into our political DNA through the lived experience and struggles of generations, is the pursuit of the common good of the American people — especially the interests of the majority whose lack of property and power leaves them at the tender mercies of the marketplace and its proprietors.​ 

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In the 250th anniversary of 1776, that ideal is a powerful tool in combating the jingoism of the MAGA fraud.  A Republican Congress that rubber-stamps and cowers before Trump's wrecking-ball administration should not escape the righteous indignation of the American people on November 3. This is the essential next step to reclaiming American democracy

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American Democracy has a treasured past. 

Its future hangs in the balance.

 

​“Equality was in fact the most radical and most powerful ideological force let loose in the Revolution.” 

• Gordon Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution

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“An equality of property . . . is the very soul of a republic—While this continues, the people will inevitably possess both power and freedom; when this is lost, power departs, liberty expires, and a commonwealth will inevitably assume some other form.”

• Noah Webster, “Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution,” 1787

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“It is confessed on all hands that taxes should be raised by from individuals in proportion to their wealth.”

• Gouverneur Morris, “An American: Letters on Public Finance,” February 29, 1780

 

“The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on.  If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation.”

• Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Oct. 28, 1785, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 9, p. 682

 

“Personal property is the effect of society, and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally . . .  All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

• Thomas Paine, “Agrarian Justice,” 1797      

 

“A democracy—that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people.”

• Rev. Theodore Parker, “The American Idea,” speech at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention, May 29, 1850

 

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”

• Abraham Lincoln, August 1858

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Democracy has “the ultimate purpose of securing the welfare of the people.”

• Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 1902​

 

“There is felt today very widely the inconsistency in this condition of political democracy and industrial absolutism.  The people are beginning to doubt whether in the long run democracy and absolutism can coexist in the same community; beginning to doubt whether there is a justification for the great inequalities in the distribution of wealth, for the rapid creation of fortunes, more mysterious than the deeds of Aladdin’s lamp.”

•  Louis Brandeis, future Supreme Court justice, “The Opportunity in the Law,” Harvard Ethical Society, May 4, 1905

 

“I regard this contest as one to determine who shall rule this free country—the people through their governmental agents, or a few ruthless and domineering men whose wealth makes them peculiarly formidable because they hide behind the breastworks of corporate organization.”

• Theodore Roosevelt, Address at the Pilgrim Memorial Monument, Provincetown, Mass., August 20, 1907

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“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies, April 29, 1938

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“We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.”

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt, final re-election campaign speech, Madison Square Garden, October 31, 1936

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“My policy is as radical as the Constitution of the United States.”

• Franklin D. Roosevelt, campaign speech in Portland, Oregon, September 21, 1932

 

"Salus populi suprema lex esto." (“Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law.”)

• Cicero, Roman statesman, De Legibus

• State Motto of Missouri

 

“The poorest hee ... in England hath a life to live, as the greatest hee.”

• Col. Thomas Rainborowe, English New Model Army, Debates at Putney, October 1647.