Below is my thinking on why it seems that America's political map is in dissonance to the realities and challenges that Americans must confront in their day to day living.
Jay Diamond
Talk Host
WRKO-AM
Boston
The challenge of politics is to determine who will exercise Legitimate authority, and where Legitimate authority correctly resides.
Some people feel more comfortable in a system where property rights are held sacrosanct and where the owners of property have "freedom" to use their property as they please as well as the "freedom" to make and enforce the rules as to how others may behave on their property.
This "philosophy" places almost all legitimate authority in the hands of the property owners of the world.
This "philosophy" places the highest value on the ownership of capital.
This "philosophy" does not recognize the political authority of mere voters to make rules as to how an owner of property may exploit the property he owns.
This "philosophy" posits that "ownership" means Ownership; that an owner is completely whole and inviolable in his property......After all, he OWNS it.
Who are mere voters with no ownership interest in the property to dare to dictate how the real Owner of the property may use it !
This philosophy demands that the world therefore be organized around the prerogatives of those who own it, rather than on the principle that people have rights inherent in their very existence to determine the conditions under which they will live and get what they need.
The "ownership society" is therefore opposed to Democracy because it sees the institutions of democracy as illegitimate infringements on the rights of an owner to his property insofar as these institutions empower mere voters to tax (owners interpret taxes on property as confiscation) the property, make laws regulating the activities allowable on the property, and in general circumscribe the extent to which any owner of property may exploit said property to his own advantage.
The "ownership society" is therefore a very fine system for the people who own the property.
The problem with the "ownership society" is that it doesn't accord any legitimate authority in the world to those who happen not to own the world.
Since it places All legitimate authority in the hands of property owners, it places zero legitimate authority in the hands of those who do not own property.
It therefore makes vassals of people who must earn their way in this world on the basis of selling their labor, rather than on the basis of their ownership of property.
If the property owners are the only legitimate rule makers, then those who do not own property, and who must therefore resort to selling their labor in order to live, must yield to and live according to the dictates set down by the owners of property.
It is not difficult to understand that this is not the happiest arrangement for those who must earn their bread by their labor rather than their property.
It is an arrangement that vouchsafes almost no control of one's life to oneself.
To the extent that the "ownership" society and the prerogatives of ownership flourish in a polity where most of the people are mere voters rather than property owners, it is evidence that either many of these mere voters do not comprehend the reality surrounding them, or have decided, for whatever reason, to obediently acquiesce to the rules that others have set out for them.
That is how I understand the problem of who will exercise legitimate authority in the world in which I participate.
That is how I understand Politics.
Jay Diamond