The New/Old Republican Paradise

Mit Romney, as well as most other Republican "leaders", says that the economy will be fine and all kinds of new jobs will be created if we just lower the tax burden on the super wealthy, dispense with environmental protection, strip away regulations that monitor and control industry, and return to the golden days of all-American health care. Oh yes, we should also deport millions of "illegal immigrants", deny women their Constitutional right to choose an abortion, make it increasingly difficult for women to obtain contraception, and exclude as many poor people from voting as possible. While we are at it, we should break apart as many unions as possible and deny collective bargaining rights to as many workers as we can. 

This vision of paradise is, of course, nothing new. It is a perfect model of how the country ran in the 1890s and early 1900s. Unfortunately, being five or more generations away from those wonderful times, few Americans understand why we have unions and collective bargaining and why the vote is such a precious possession. Women did not have the right to vote until the 1920s; 18-year-old soldiers did not have the right to vote until the 1960s; and massive numbers of people were disenfranchised because they could not read or recite passages from the Constitution. 

One of the most admirable features of uncontrolled corporate Capitalism was the "company town." The corporation offered almost all available jobs, owned all of the housing, and ran most of the services (like food stores). Wages were kept so low that virtually nothing was left over after rents were paid, clothes were purchased, and children fed. Hours of labor were often six days per week for up to 12 hours per day. Children frequently had to work in the factories or mines just to keep the family going. The only restraint on corporations was to pay enough so that workers did not die in massive numbers. Meanwhile, few safety precautions were taken and workers died in accidents on a daily basis. 

This was not only a system with no regulation of industry; it was a system in which government supported industry. Workers who threatened to rebel or strike were taken out by police or military and either shot dead or put up for trial in judicial systems that were heavily oriented toward the corporations. Corporations simply owned government --- local, state, and Federal. Today, as we watch billionaires literally gushing money into support of Romney, it is easy to believe that we are headed back to the good old days in which business owns government and 99% of other people pay for it with their lives. 

What continues to boggle the imagination is why 50% of Americans will continue to vote for something like this when it is so enormously contrary to their own interests. I can only think that the reason for Republican success is their ability to hide behind the weird mask of "social issues" --- anti-abortion, anti-sex-education, anti-evolution, anti-science, and anti-gay-rights --- so that people don't look beyond to that paradise of starvation-level employment, social impotence, and child labor.