02 August 2010

A little history: how a letter in 1971 set the stage for today's broken politics

A quick trip to the (virtual) archives uncovered this secret letter written by Supreme Court Justice-to-be Louis Powell in 1971. Headed "attack on American free enterprise system" it outlines the world we live in today-- where the working class and ordinary citizens are rendered nearly voiceless while corporations control not only the means of production (wink wink!) but the flow of information and indeed much of the government itself. All this was a conscious strategic move, launched in the 1970s, advanced mightily during the Reagan years, and fully matured during the George W. Bush era.

Read it and weep. This is as much a founding document of modern American conservativism as Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative. It is a blueprint of how things came to be, and as such explains a great deal of why our world is a worse place than it might have been if other values had prevailed.

-Dr.DRL (one of the "liberal faculty" that had Powell terrified 40 years ago)

No comments:

Post a Comment