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Historian: Americans are right to wonder if the Great Experiment has failed
By Heather Cox Richardson

Updated 3:25 PM ET, Thu July 19, 2018

Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of history at Boston College. Her most recent book is
"To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party." The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author. View more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN)Americans are right to wonder if, at long last, what George Washington called the Great Experiment has failed, and that our founders have lost their extraordinary wager that regular people could govern themselves better than a few rich men could.

Consider that in his disastrous press conference in Helsinki Monday -- and again in a comment before a Cabinet meeting Wednesday -- President Donald Trump sided with a hostile foreign oligarchy over our own democracy.

Asked by a reporter Wednesday, "Is Russia still targeting the U.S., Mr. President?," Trump responded, shaking his head "Thank you very much. No." (Later, his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, offered that he was saying "no" to answering questions.)

Trump's alliance with Russia's Vladimir Putin, in defiance of America's own intelligence community, the Department of Justice, and the bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, forces us to face that the fundamental principles of our nation are under attack.

History suggests the game is not yet lost. Three times before, in the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1920s, oligarchs took over the American government and threatened to destroy democracy. In each case, they overreached, and regular folks took back their government.

Democracy was always a gamble. In 1776, the founders rejected the old idea that government should be based on hierarchies according to wealth or birth or religion. They declared it "self-evident" that "all men are created equal," and they created a popular government based on the radical idea of equality before the law.
For all that they got around the problem of slavery by defining "all men" as "all white men," and that they wrote women out of self-government altogether, their vision was still astonishing. Could regular men really govern themselves?
Three times in our history, a wealthy elite has thought the answer was no.

In the 1850s, wealthy southern slaveholders laid out the argument. They said the founders were wrong: all men were not created equal. God had made some men better than others.
South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond explained that those better men must rule the rest: most folks were "mudsills" he said, supporting their betters just as the sills of a house were driven into the mud to support the house itself. The mudsills were society's menial workers, dull, unambitious, and good only for creating wealth that better, civilized people with educations and connections would use to advance the economy and society.

Mudsills must not vote, for they would want a fairer distribution of the wealth they created. Limited resources would cripple the ability of society's true leaders to shape progress.

So convinced were the slaveholders that they were right, they tried to destroy the nation and start a new country. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln noted that the idea of equality was no longer "self-evident," but rather "a proposition."
The slave owners lost, of course, but their worldview reappeared in the late 19th century with the rise of industrialists and their influence over Congress. Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie defended the robber barons as stewards of the nation's wealth, using it meaningfully, unlike workers, who would fritter it away.

This argument, too, failed in the face of the Progressive Era. But when a similar argument in the 1920s brought the Great Crash, Wall Street executives blamed the economic disaster on overpaid public workers.

We are in the newest incarnation of this age-old struggle. Since Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reorganized the government in the 1930s to give a "new deal" to the American people -- regulating business, promoting basic social welfare, and providing infrastructure -- wealthy men have howled that such a government is socialism, for the taxes to fund such policies redistribute wealth from the haves to the have-nots.

While most Americans recognize the New Deal state as the foundation of our stability and prosperity since WWII, today's Republicans are determined to destroy it.

Trump's deliberate attacks on our democratic allies and on NATO play into Putin's hands, but there is more to Trump's friendliness to the Russian oligarch than fear of kompromat.

Trump and Putin share the same worldview: that the world should be governed by a few wealthy men who should not be hamstrung by regulations or human rights because they know better than the rest of us how to manage the economy, the government, and, therefore, society.

To make that happen, Trump is destroying the post-WWII New Deal state, and today's Republican leaders are cheering him on. After a series of presidents who believed that government should serve the people, they have found their man at last.
Never before has a president sided with a foreign oligarch, but in the past, oligarchs have rejected government regulations, suppressed opposition voters, gamed the system, and finally taken refuge in the Supreme Court to retain control. In each instance, regular Americans ultimately reclaimed democracy. Will it happen again? As George Washington said, we walk on untrodden ground.

We will get through this. We survived a civil war and 2 world wars.

Hopefully the adults will show up soon.

Before reading this article I went to her twitter and the first retweet was:



So now I will read it with the proper context.

No we won't survive this. Our Republic has survived many things...World Wars, Civil Wars, etc but there was ONE THING they had, that we no longer have...smart voters.

See you used to be REQUIRED to own property to vote. We should go back to that. 90% of the people who vote are uneducated morons that pay very little taxes, live in public housing or rent from someone who pays taxes. Its a fact that very few people who vote today actually pay taxes.

See this below is what is allowed to vote when you allow non-property owners to cast votes.


you should NOT be allowed to vote unless you own your property and pay property taxes. This means you have a high probability of being educated. This means you have a high probability of not receiving government assistance. This means you have a high probability of actually having a job that consists of more then flipping hamburgers or serving pizza.

The idiocy we see today is completely out of hand. Morons like Trump and Obama only get elected because the property ownership requirement to vote that the founders put into place to protect this county from idiots was taken away.

I didn't own my 1st house until I was 30 years old, and I would have been perfectly fine with no being allowed to vote while I rented. A voter needs to be paying property taxes, not rent, PROPERTY TAXES, and if your not paying them, you shouldn't be able to vote.

Seriously, just change the voting back to only allowing land owners to vote, our problems would disappear overnight if we made this change...half these morons that get elected to these offices never even sniff victory. We would put in much better qualified people if the voting pool was only made up of landowners.

Make it happen! Want to vote? Buy some property, otherwise STFU!!!

This is why only land owners should make up our armed services.

Eh, the rich are too rich, but what she is asking for simply cannot be paid for by the 1%. Free college, cancellation of student debt and $15 minimum wage, I am not about to do the math but that is Ayn Rand level taxation and this anchor is right.....those people will leave the country.


I think there are way too many loopholes is taxes, I think Jeff Bezos does not pay enough in taxes and I think there are real benefits to taxing people who have more than a billion dollars. Bezos is beyond generational wealth, he could not spend his money in 10 generations and that does create financial inequity. Something needs to be done, we can't let companies like Amazon destroy every local business, ruin lives and then not pay for it.



Allowing a student who can't be more than 19 on your show to discuss high level economics when she is clearly and ideologue is low hanging fruit.

Yeah...and then why your at it, lets not let minorties, women, or legal immigrants vote either.........

statements like this is what hurt's R's.

If you can DIE for your country, without owning land, you should be able to vote for person sending you to that place to die...if you own land or not.- JMO

Um no. What you're saying is that only property owners get a say who speaks for them in the government. And that's not what it means to be a citizen.

And your theory sucks anyway. These young voters who don't own property are the only thing that are going to save this country. They got the majority vote right in this past election.

Holy crap we agree!

i feel stupid for actually reading any of this.

Nothing is stopping them from buying a piece of property. All thats in their way is hard work and self improvement. I slaved away for generations to buy what I got....If i can do it, anyone can. Stop making excuses. Being a woman, a minority, or a legal immigrant doesn't stop anyone from buying a house!

I think one should be very careful with claims like "they slaved away".

Me too - about the comment he made.

But, about the Keelee girl? If much of the younger generation is like her, we're in a pile of poo.

She wants free this, free that, free free free.....and let the 1% pay for it. ???

She supported a 90% tax for people earning over $250,000.00. So she can get her free stuff.


Do the math on that. Say you make $500,000.00 a year. Taxed at 90%, you'd get to keep all of $50,000.

Who's going to do that?

This sentence seemed interesting to me:

You really have no idea what I even stated....

There is a reason why we stopped that being a requirement, similar to the reason why we put an end to not allowing those to vote as I pointed it.

its discrimination for one, and just flat out stupid idea for another.

well, as long as they are a legal citizen of course

Do you know what a "generation" is? I will give you a hint, You only belong to one

90%

Wasn’t that the tax rate back in 1950, ya know the time when conservatives said the country was great?

Now it’s out the question?

I agree with you about what she’s saying. The free this and that is beyond annoying to listen to.

I agree that 90% is stupid....but so is the current peanuts corporations pay due to their effective tax rates.

If I'm not mistaken, back in the 50's or so, the tax rate was, I guess, somewhere around 90%. But no one paid that.

Just like no one would pay 90% now, even if it did jump that high.

Look bro, you got to understand that more and more people are aware of other developed countries and how they operate with regards to quality of life, social programs, etc.

People like myself and younger are quite honestly tired of the excuses that we’re broke when it comes to bettering the quality of life for Americans, but always seem to find money to go kill some Arabs in the Middle East.

That's the point. Extreme levels of wealth will be pointless to hoard and would encourage those at the top to not pay themselves $600,000+ a year and split that money up between those working under them. That's what was going on in the 50's and 60's.

Of course this is mainly pointless, most extreme wealth operates in the stock market and not through wage income. Any plan that doesn't tax stock transactions is pointless.

idk what the great answer could be to solve our current political crisis in America.

But, one thing that I believe is pretty certain, I'm fairly certain that anyone that gets the nomination from the Republican or Democratic parties, and therefore becomes the de facto candidate for the presidency. They should not become president.

I would even go so far as to say that anyone who has the ambition to go into politics, and rises to the state or national level to become a senator or state representative, I don't think they should be in office either.

If we could create a system, where each and every American citizen registered as a voter could be cast into some random lottery, and then, instead of holding elections to "choose" our representatives, we simply roll the lottery dice and draw a name. Almost like jury duty, but on a much bigger scale.

And those people selected would have to hold office as their civic duty and make the decisions that they thought were right for the people.

This way, we could actually have a pretty solid cross section of Americans to represent us. People from a varied assortment of socio-economic backgrounds. It wouldn't be a bunch of out of touch Washington scoundrels populating our legislature year after year.

You would have all types coming in and I think they could identify with everyday citizens a whole lot better than what we have now.

I'm sure that you would have some bad apples here and there, but I think that it would even out and we'd have a better group than we could ever elect.

Can you expound on your last statement? Stock transactions aren't taxed?

Perhaps you mean "not before you sell them"? Because, at least for me, the dividends are taxed.


Side note here: I got lucky about 3, 3 1/2 years ago. Got 100 shares in a bank. $2000. Dividends ended up being 80 to 86 dollars a year.

Then, the stock split - I had 200 shares. Value was cut in half, of course. Then it went on NASDAQ. The price of that stock, as I speak, is $47.61. (why didn't I get more????????)

I know 2 people, relatives actually, that have 17,000 shares, and 144,000 shares respectively. They do pay taxes on the dividends as well. And, should they sell them, would also pay tax on the gains. Those are details I don't know about, of course.

I meant every time you buy stocks or dividends, it's not taxed. For example, you can buy $100 worth of that bank stock and pay zero taxes on it. However if you buy $100 worth of any good, you'll be assigned a tax. That's what I meant by transactions. Not income you make via dividends.

Okay. Thanks for the clarification.

So, you're talking sales tax I see. There are some states that don't charge sales tax on anything. And, I wasn't aware you could buy dividends.

Dividend stocks. sorry for the confusion. phone about to die and I'm just trying to make my point before it does.

And yes, you could boil it down to a 'sales tax' but it's referred to more as a 'speculative tax'.

Interesting concept.

If we did adopt it, we'd run the risk of a President Vambo, however.


just sayin'

Sounds like a presidential hunger games.

OK, so maybe we'd have to take another look at our checks and balances to make sure that should we get a sociopath (not saying Vambo is a sociopath, just saying that if our proposed lotto elected someone of faulty mental capacity) in the oval office we could count on the legislative and judicial branches to provide the accountability necessary to prevent whatever nutzoid-in-chief from pressing the nuclear button and nuking Swaziland....or declaring war on New Zealand.....

Start with an IQ test and a psyche eval.

I would prefer a wealth cap to more taxation. I personally don't think personal wealth should be allowed to exceed 2 billion dollars. It's just too much wealth, power, and influence over the government with their ability to lobby for any law they want by buying off the politicians. You can't even fairly compete against their businesses once they get that wealthy because they will buy off every politician and pass laws to run you out of business.

There is just too much wealth concentrated in too few people's hands.

It should not exceed what you can spend in your lifetime or that of your kids or grand kids to live as a 1 %er. But not so much a limit as a forcing of abundance back into the working economy and out of speculation.

I'm not for a 'wealth cap'. But there needs to be something that prevents someone from doing something to the market or economy that messes it up for everyone else.

webbie

Trump is taking US down the path to tyranny
By Jeffrey Sachs

Updated 7:40 PM ET, Tue July 24, 2018

Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author; view more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN)The United States was born in a revolt against the tyranny of King George III. The Constitution was designed to prevent tyranny through a system of checks and balances, but in President Trump's America, those safeguards are failing.

Donald Trump holds the grandiose belief that only he should rule America. Unchecked by cowed or complicit Republicans in Congress, Trump invokes executive authority to alter policies and practices long established by law and treaty.
Days after his summit meeting with Vladimir Putin, no one knows what the two autocrats agreed to, or even talked about -- not the President's top aides, nor the Pentagon, nor security establishment or Congress, never mind the rest of us. And in the midst of the ensuing uproar, Trump has invited Putin to Washington, without telling his top intelligence official and no doubt most other key aides and officials.
The list of one-man actions grows rapidly. Trump is single-handedly imposing hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs -- that is, taxes -- on imported goods from key US allies and China, without any explicit or implicit Congressional backing.
Trump abrogated the Iran nuclear deal despite its unanimous support by the UN Security Council. Trump is in the process of imposing new and severe sanctions against Iran, including the cutoff of all of Iran's oil exports, against the international agreement with Iran and with no vote of Congress, presumably to try to topple the Iranian regime.

Not surprisingly, and perhaps as intended, Trump's drumbeat of belligerency triggered an ominous warning from Iran, and now an escalation from Trump, casting the increasingly ominous confrontation with Iran as yet another one-man Trump show.
Trump used executive authority without Congressional mandate to impose a travel ban on several Muslim-majority states; to announce the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement despite treaty-bound US obligations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; and to change the status quo regarding Jerusalem against the will of the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly. Trump extended the stay of US troops in Syria without oversight or approval by Congress.
Political scientists are documenting America's descent toward one-man rule. A recent ranking of democracies around the world by the Swedish academic think-tank the V-Dem Institute put the US at the 31st position in 2017, a precipitous fall from 7th place in 2015. According to the report, "There is clear evidence of autocratization [the movement towards one-person rule] on several indicators.

"The lower quality of liberal democracy stems primarily from weakening constraints on the executive."
Similarly, the Democracy Index of The Economist Intelligence Unit now ranks the US only as a "flawed democracy."
Trump supporters argue that Trump is merely using his legal authority to the fullest. Yet the situation is worse than that. Simply by invoking the phrase "national security," Trump can push the Congress and Supreme Court to give him almost any degree of latitude. Trump's tariffs (under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962), the travel ban and his abrogation of the Iran nuclear deal were all made under the incantation of national security.

The Supreme Court, by a 5-4 majority, upheld the travel ban because the majority refused to second-guess the President on a claim of national security. Congress is almost completely supine on matters that the President declares to be about war and peace.

The Constitution is not supposed to work this way. Under Article I, Section 8, the power to wage war rests with Congress. So does the power to levy taxes and tariffs. Yet in each case, an aggressive President may invoke national security to circumvent the Congress. Congress's chronic failure to oversee presidential war-making, prolonged troop placements and overseas bases, with this president and earlier ones, is similarly notorious.

And Congress's failure to challenge Trump on his claims that Canada's steel and aluminum exports or China's consumer product exports constitute a "national security threat" is unforgivable.

Two long-term trends are at play, both exploited by Trump in his grab for power.

The first is the relentless growth of the national-security state since World War II, with America's hundreds of military bases and nonstop war-making around the world, including covert wars and influence campaigns run by the CIA. For more than half a century, Congress and the Supreme Court have tended to give presidents an almost free hand in starting wars, which are checked only later by the gradual mobilization of public opposition.

The second is the rise of corporate power in driving federal policy. As presidents implement the corporate agenda, Congress stands back. The Supreme Court, starting in the 1970s and continuing under Chief Justice John Roberts, has also championed the corporate lobby, giving the President a wide berth in promoting the corporate agenda. The Congress, in thrall to corporate lobbies, is complicit in letting the President unilaterally dismantle environmental and consumer-protection regulations.

Not all is lost. Special Counsel Robert Mueller and lower courts may still stand up to the President, even though the Supreme Court has become a predictable 5-4 backer of almost limitless presidential authority. Trump's assertion of power would also be counteracted if the Democrats win at least one of the chambers of Congress in November.

Yet these are fragile reeds. The US may well be one major war away from the collapse of American democracy, most likely a war with Iran for the regime change that Trump seeks.
The Nazi henchman Hermann Göring explained in Nuremberg prison how easy it is to mobilize the public to war: "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Trump has started with a trade war, but we shouldn't be surprised if the trade war morphs into a hot one. We are far down the path to tyranny.

Correction: An earlier version of this commentary incorrectly stated the location of the V-Dem Institute. It is based in Sweden, not Germany.