Oligarchy 101

From The Ramparts

Junious Ricardo Stanton

Oligarchy 101

Oligarchy: a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.

The United States of America is and has always been an oligarchy: a nation ruled by a small faction of rich white men despite its claims to be a republic or in recent years a “democracy”. When the delegates went to Philadelphia in 1787 their charge was to revise The Articles of Confederation to make governing more efficient because the government set up following the Revolution was not strong enough to deal with the complex issues facing the new nation. At that time the leaders, fearful of the tyranny of a monarch and a strong centralized government set up a system whereby the states were sovereign and the central government could not enforce anything against the states’ will even if it was detrimental to the rest of the states. This lack of power exacerbated existing interstate issues such as: commerce, toll roads and tariffs imposed by one state against another state’s goods. The government was ineffective because Congress the governing body had no power to tax to raise money and getting legislation passed was cumbersome since it required a unanimous vote.

The states soon realized they needed to fix some of these problems. However once the delegates got to Philadelphia they conspired to go against their mandate and create an entirely new form of government that put themselves in charge. During the war for independence the colonies were governed by the Continental Congress that was made up of the rich. “The Continental Congress, which governed the colonies through the war, was dominated by rich men, linked together in factions and compacts by business and family connections. These links connected North and South, East and West. For instance, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia was connected with the Adamses of Massachusetts and the Shippens of Pennsylvania. Delegates from middle and southern colonies were connected with Robert Morris of Pennsylvania through commerce and land speculation. Morris was superintendent of finance, and his assistant was Gouverneur Morris.” History Is A Weapon, A People’s History of The United States by Howard Zinn http:// historyisawewwwapon.com/defcon1/zinnkin5.html

Contrary to what we’ve been programmed and brainwashed to believe, all the American colonialists didn’t support the war for independence. There was a large segment that remained loyal to England (called Tories) and a significant portion that remained neutral. Many viewed it as a rich man’s war and wanted no part of it. Many were conscripted (drafted) into the war and were forced to fight. Many fought (like the 5,000 or so enslaved Africans) for an improvement in their status.

After the war was won and a treaty was signed, the same class of leaders who today we would call the 1% who ran the Continental Congress tended to hold sway in the political life in their respective states. “Edmund Morgan sums up the class nature of the Revolution this way: ‘The fact that the lower ranks were involved in the contest should not obscure the fact that the contest itself was generally a struggle for office and power between members of an upper class: the new against the established.’ Looking at the situation after the Revolution, Richard Morris comments: ‘Everywhere one finds inequality.’ He finds ‘the people’ of ‘We the people of the United States’ (a phrase coined by the very rich Gouverneur Morris) did not mean Indians or blacks or women or white servants. In fact, there were more indentured servants than ever, and the Revolution ‘did nothing to end and little to ameliorate white bondage.’ Carl Degler says (Out of Our Past): ‘No new social class came to power through the door of the American revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class.’ George Washington was the richest man in America. John Hancock was a prosperous Boston merchant. Benjamin Franklin was a wealthy printer. And so on.” Ibid

These white men came to Philadelphia in September of 1787 and conspired to craft a government that would cement their power and control over the nation. They met in secret fashioning a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich that excluded all women, all indigenous peoples, all Blacks, and poor white males. Even today we are taught this was a revolutionary concept when in fact it was merely a continuation of the old system with a new set of shot callers and check holders to use modern vocabulary.

Through the years their descendants (most US presidents are related http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2183858/All-presidents-bar-directly-descended-medieval-English-king.html ) have perpetrated a fraud on the masses and duped us into believing the system was open, equal and fair when it was never like that. When they use a term like “national interest” to get us to fight in their wars or acquiesce to their plans and schemes they are not talking about our interests, just theirs.

A recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin corroborates what author G. William Homhoff proved in his book Who Rules America and his Website http://whorulesamerica.net/ that this country is run and ruled by a select few, a group of rich families interconnected through business, shared interests and in some cases marriage.

Like it or not, this is the way it is in America.

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