Thursday, February 16, 2012

In Athens, ever-increasing popular participation in politics led to rule by demagogy. And in today’s America, money is now the great enabler of demagogy. 

As the Nobel-winning economist A. Michael Spence has put it, America has gone from “one propertied man, one vote; to one man, one vote; to one person, one vote; trending to one dollar, one vote.” By any measure, the United States is a constitutional republic in name only. 

Elected representatives have no minds of their own and respond only to the whims of public opinion as they seek re-election; 

special interests manipulate the people into voting for ever-lower taxes and higher government spending, sometimes even supporting self-destructive wars. 

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