Cross posted at Peace is Active
Democracy is not the goal for religious and market fundamentlists. They don't want public debate and public decisions being made. They want everything to be based on their favorite value.
In the Middle East, religious fundamentalists don't support democracy because they want everything to be based on religious values and leadership. They don't want the "public" telling them that women should have equal rights or that listening to music is acceptable. Religious fundamentalists want to destroy democracy.
In the United States, market fundamentalists don't support democracy because they want everything to be based on market values. The want politics, healthcare, education, and all other decisions to be based on who has the most money. They don't want the "public" telling them what values to consider. Market fundamentalists want to destroy democracy.
So how do market fundamentalists want to destroy democracy? We can already see how many of our democratic decisions are being tied to economic value. You can't run for office unless you are personally wealthy or spend most of your time fundraising in order to purchase enough advertisements. By changing the cost of admission to the democratic process, you can change democracy from a "public" forum into a "private" gated community.
Another way to destroy democracy is to starve it of funding. The easiest way to do this is to cut taxes (lower income) and spend massive amounts of money (rack up a huge credit card debt). President Bush has cut taxes and has accumulated more debt for the United States than all of the Presidents before him - combined.
To send the country into debt, you need to spend massive amounts of money. This is where the corruption comes in. It is no fun to send a country into debt unless you can direct most of the wasteful spending to your friends. So the oil industry got their public war for private profit. The drug industry got a healthcare plan that doesn't allow the public to negotiate for lower prices. No Child Left Behind will underfund and then test our students to prove that public education is a failure and should be replaced by private schools. Why have the government put social security money into safe bonds when the money could be given to companies like Enron and Worldcom?
When a democracy is in massive amounts of debt, many things will go unfunded. The Environmental Protection Agency won't be able to monitor toxic emmissions if they don't have enough money to hire employees or to buy testing equipment. We won't be able to offer kids an education if there is no money to hire teachers and build schools.
So be careful of market fundamentalists who want to send our democracy into massive amounts of debt. What is happening in this country is no accident and is not the result of incompetence. It is a strategy to destroy democracy.
We can change this. We can elect people who support legitimate governments, fair markets, and healthy environments.
We have the ability to live in peace.