A Time To Fight - Jim Webb

Jim Webb
A Time To Fight

Pg 17
America today is overwhelmed by vagueness. We have entered a dangerous, unprecedented cycle of seemingly unsolvable unknowns. Our foreign policy is confused, without clear direction, increasingly vulnerable to such largely unexamined long-term threats as China’s emerging power even as it has become bogged down in the never-ending struggles of the Middle East. Our demographic makeup has been altered dramatically and is set to keep on change, through both legal and illegal immigration. Our economic policies, particularly in the age of globalization, have produced widely divergent results inside our own society, far beyond the ability of current government programs to design a fair formula for those who have unfairly benefited and on behalf of those other who have been unfairly hurt.

And as a result of this last point, our country has been increasingly calcifying along class lines, in a way we have not seen for more than a century and to an extent that may be unprecedented in our entire history. This is no longer a simple question of haves and have-nots. Every social and economic indicator shows that America now has an upper class that has swung exponentially away from the rest of society. To make matters worse, many of those at the very top now tend to view their inordinate success as simply a function of their innate talent in a brave new world of socioeconomic Darwinism, and have become openly consumed by self-justifying greed.

We are at risk of developing a permanent underclass. Government “safety nets” programs that forestall open rebellion but at the same time neglect their well being in all the important ways that might contribute to true social and economic advancement now prop up millions of Americans. Lacking a pathway to success and frozen inside crime infested neighborhoods, this underclass has grown accustomed to inadequate schools, largely inaccessible health care, and prison as an alternative lifestyle, single-parent homes, and long-term unemployment.
Equally troubling, America’s vaunted middle class, the historic backbone of our economy, the wellspring of social advancement, and the repository of our traditional values, is in serious peril. Literally tens of millions of Americans are now watching uneasily as trends that are beyond their control threaten to dissipate their way of life, while their government leaders too often stand idly by. At the heart of their problem are the twin concerns of illegal immigration and globalization, which affect their collective bargaining rights as well as the overall benefits packages that in the past made our worker the envy of the rest of the world. Today, our workers are at the mercy of cutthroat executives who are vastly overpaid, partly as consequence of giving their jobs away to other people. Illegal immigration has in some cases eliminated jobs and in others driven wage scales down, while globalization and the internationalization of corporate America have combined to send millions of good jobs overseas.

This is not hyperbolic rhetoric. For several years, corporate profits as a percentage of national wealth have been at all-time highs while the wages and salaries of our workers are at all-time lows. Even as wages and salaries have stagnated, corporate executive compensation has skyrocketed. The stock market performed off the charts, but more than half the stocks in America are owned by less than 1 percent of the people. Regular, middle-class kids are routinely frozen out of entry into the nation’s elite colleges in favor of “legacy” preferences and special-interest admission, while the elite schools have themselves become the breeding ground for an emerging interconnected international aristocracy. Our editorials and politicians talk about the American dream, and some urge us to bring democracy to the rest of the world. But more than two million Americans are now in prison, by far the highest incarceration rate in the so-called advanced world. Indeed, our system of criminal justice, which is rarely if ever debated in public, is a national shame, a key indicator of how far we have fallen from our traditional self-image as an open, fair society.

As this drift toward societal regression has taken place, America’s leadership has largely been paralyzed, unable or unwilling to stop the slide. This is the most confusing aspect of our present state of affairs. A conundrum challenges us with every crisis that goes unsolved. Where are the leaders? Has our political process become so compromised by powerful interest groups and the threat of character assassination that even the best among us will not dare to speak honestly about the solutions that might bring us back to common sense and fundamental fairness?
I believe there are answers. But they cannot be found in the false debates or the emotional detours that currently define American politics. It would be hard to count the number of Americans who have turned off their TVs in utter disgust at one time or another, walking out of the house on their way to work and muttering under their breaths, “What is the matter with our system? Where are the good people, the ones who understand my problems and how the average person really has to live?”

But the truth of modern American politics is that the great speech you just made, or the issue you just talked about, is not very often going to be where your campaign will be fought if you decide to run. Your opponent’s media advisers and opponent researches are going to throw something else – often something manufactured from half-truths – onto the airwaves, night after night, week after week, to remind prospective voters of what a danger you supposedly are to all the that America holds dear. If your opponent is an incumbent, particularly an incumbent who has been careful in his or her voting patterns and in the cultivation of powerful interest groups, you will be facing someone with a multimillion-dollar campaign chest that is capable of a massive media assault that will, in the parlance, “define” you as a pretty slimy human being.
With all of this clutter on the political radar screen, the average voter either becomes disgusted or decides to vote for whichever candidate seems capable of doing the least amount of harm. This is how aristocracies, however we wish to define them, retain their power. And it is also how interests groups thwart meaningful change.

Pg 39.
“We rejoice in our sufferings,” wrote Paul, “knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, for God’s love has been poured into our hearts”

Pg 83.

The bank would be in the hands of people who were benefiting from personal influence that eluded the average citizen. If the legislation were renewed, the bank would have perpetuated itself in the hands of a permanent aristocracy, completely insulated from competition and from the oversight of the government. Many members of congress were on the Banks direct payroll, including New England political giant Daniel Webster, who made no secret of the fact that the retainer he received from the bank had become “a dependable source of private revenue.”

Part of his veto message stated, “In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy and virtue, every man is entitled to protection by lay; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions… to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of our society… who have neither the time nor the means of securing favors to themselves, have the right to complain of the injustice of their Government.”

Teddy,

“In the history of mankind many republic have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole. Again and again in the republics of ancient Greece, in those of medieval Italy and medieval Flanders, this tendency was shown, and wherever the tendency became habit it invariably and inevitably proved fatal to the state. In the final result, it mattered not one whit whether the movement was in favor of one class or of another. We must act upon the motto of all for each and each for all… We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.”