Teribus, educate yourself.

A popular misconception (fostered, not just by both big business and the Bush administration, but long before they came along) has it that democracy and capitalism are the same thing. They are not. In fact, they are mutually inimical. Capitalism is an economic system, not a political system. Merriam-Webster defines capitalism as

an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market

Merriam-Webster defines democracy as

1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
2 : a political unit that has a democratic government
3 capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the U.S.
4 : the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority
5 : the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

For the past seventy years, the United States has had a democratic political system and an economic system of regulated capitalism. Unregulated capitalism, the system that prevailed prior to the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, led to unbridled competition, which, rather than improving the quality of products and driving prices down as many pro-capitalist economists argue, resulted in robber-baronism, company mergers and take-overs, the elimination of competition ("You will be absorbed! Resistance is futile!"), and the growth of monopolies. Left to its own devices, this inevitably leads to an economy dominated by a few large corporations who have a strangle-hold on the government—if not a complete co-mingling of corporations with government (which, incidentally, is Mussolini's definition of fascism—and who should know better than the man who invented it?). Under FDR, regulations were introduced that prevented this kind of corporate domination, brought the country out of the Depression (caused by Enron-style speculation and corporate corruption), and began weaving a social safety net for the protection of American citizens—such things as the "old age pension," now known as Social Security, and an alphabet soup of other programs such as the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) and the WPA (Works Projects Administration) for putting the unemployed millions back to work—the benefits of which we are still enjoying, although almost nobody realizes where they came from.

Big Business has been chafing under these regulations ever since because it prevents them from eating everybody else in the vicinity, exploiting natural resources that FDR's programs put on reserve for future generations, and turning the work force into compliant wage-slaves. And the Social Darwinists have been whining that the social safety net doesn't let people die in the gutter, this eliminating what they characterize as "welfare-cheats" and "social parasites" (the elderly, the disabled, and those who, often because of such things as "out-sourcing"—corporations laying off their work force and moving jobs overseas to take advantage of cheap laborer—find themselves jobless and/or homeless).

The Bush administration is now in the process of trying to bring about the seventy-year-old dream of the corporate community and the Social Darwinists: rescind everything that FDR accomplished (along with the accomplishments of Lyndon B. Johnson's "war on poverty," i.e. such things as Medicare and Medicaid).

But this is only the beginning. Taking advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Bush administration, dominated by neo-conservatives, are hell-bent on consolidation the position of the United States as the world's only super-power. The first step is control of the world's energy resources, which, right now, consists primarily of oil and natural gas reserves. The United States doesn't necessarily want the gas and oil for itself. Not so "crude" (so to speak). He who controls the tap, controls the world. Once this control is securely acquired, the Empire America can expand with a minimum of resistance. What "making the world safe for democracy" means is making the world a friendly and compliant place for American based multi-national corporations.

You can read all of this stuff for yourself (which, of course, you won't believe, despite that fact that it's all explained—in their own words—by members of the Bush administration). God knows, I've posted the link to the PNAC web site often enough. Look it up for yourself.

On top of this the Bush administration is pushing touch-screen voting machines made by Diebold. This kind of voting machine is remarkably easy to diddle, and as they stand now, they give you no print-out and leave on paper-trail, meaning a recount is not possible. Diebold is resisting the addition of this feature. And how's this? The head of Diebold stated that he considers it his God-given mission to see that Bush is "re-elected" in 2004. I won't even go into the Fundamentalist Christian Right influence on the Bush administration and its policies, but it's there in full force, and it's pretty damned frightening—God help us all!

No. Democracy and capitalism are not the same thing.

Don Firth