Bill Moyers thinks so. He hits themes important to our discussion of democracy, the nature of representation and the role public opinion play in our democracy. He also ties the theme into a discussion of the fate of the Roman Republic. Increased disparities of income helped drive it.
- Click here for this article.
The historian Plutarch warned us long ago of what happens when there is no brake on the power of great wealth to subvert the electorate. “The abuse of buying and selling votes,” he wrote of Rome, “crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread in the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of emperors.”
We don’t have emperors yet, but we do have the Roberts Court that consistently privileges the donor class.
We don’t have emperors yet, but we do have a Senate in which, as a study by the political scientist Larry Bartels reveals, “Senators appear to be considerably more responsive to the opinions of affluent constituents than to the opinions of middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution have no apparent statistical effect on their senators’ roll call votes.”
The last part is a reference to Bartel's Unequal Democracy which looks at the policy changes that have led to the growing gap between the rich and poor in the US.
- Click here for a review of the book.
