Okay.....i'm gonna sound pretty....out there with what I'm going to say. Perhaps i'm a little further out on the spectrum....anyway..
no worries (too bad this wasn't in a thread about dying red-winged blackbirds)
I don't believe that people getting together was what constituted government.
I'm operating under the most pure/simplistic definition: Government is the amalgamation of the will of the community aimed at moderating the needs of the community when, invariably, the members of the community will have different needs and different viewpoints. The size and nature of your community may call for differing forms of government, of course. They say communism, for example, works beautifully wherever everyone knows everyone (150 people or less.) No so much at a higher population size.
Those people who were making the USA both at its inception and during its growth had different: agendas, loyalties, hopes, beliefs and influences.
Yes absolutely; a goodly number of the, however, died poor and/or never surpassed what today would be considered a middle-class standard of living.
But I don't think that America was ever free from various pervasive influences.
Substitute humanity for America and you've got a point.
Another problem is that there are different types of democracy. I don't think that the governments formed under the US or UK systems are very democratic at all. For example how much say does the average person on the street really have over each decision of the government? None.
They have as much say as they choose to enforce, actually. Everyday people are occasionally still getting elected to government positions after all. By the strictest definition of Democracy, though, every individual has 1/population-nth of total influence over decision making. Ours was more representative than democratic, but not is largely oligarchy/plutocratic teetering toward fascist.
I think the way it should be done is by power being exercised from the bottom up not from the top down.
That tends to happen wherever a government is afraid of its citizenry; probably has a little to do with why the American military industrial complex is the single largest consumer of tax dollars anywhere in the world.
Your next point is about a relative golden era of government. We had the same situation in the UK with many workers rights and conditions improving and the birth of a National Health Service. However, I do not see that as a triumph of government. I see that as a concession from the capitalist class who realised that they needed to concede something to the working class who were returning back from fighting their war for them.
I can't speak for the U.K., but here it had to be forced upon the corporations and the wealthy, who pitched a fit and fought back every step of the way. They conceded nothing they were not forced to by government-enforced law.
The capitalist class were terrified. Suddenly an army of trained soldiers were being discharged from the military and brought home. These people had fought and bled for their country and seen their friends and loved ones die and they wanted a country that was worth coming back to. 'Homes for heroes' was one of the government's slogans for the housing reforms made around that time.
Doesn't work on this side of the ocean so much since we were squarely between wars at the time this happened. Frankly, if not for the progressive enforcement of anti-dynasty reforms, we might not have been capable of churning out the industrial prowess we needed to fight two wars both of which were fought on the other side of vast oceans (8-10 years later.) Some try to claim it was the wars that got us out of the great depression, somehow missing their understanding of history by an entire decade. Granted, it did help that we were the only industrial power left standing at the end of the world and a lot of the business we did was to help the world rebuild... but we had to rebuild ourselves FIRST from the war done upon the working class by the elites... and that was done through a strong government strong-arming the wealthy on behalf of labor.
I don't think the government was the 'tool of the middle class'. i think that the middle class were living under a false impression that they and the government had a tacit agreement that if they behaved conservatively then they would be given privileges.
I still can't agree in American terms anyways; For a time, the government was forced to realize that what truly made a nation strong was it's working class, and so they were motivated to act on their behalf. Since Reagan (and probably Thatcher), they've been sweet talked into thinking other things.
The government has undergone a hostile corporate takeover and works for them now. Back when it worked for us, things were a lot better. Now we're simply sliding into neofuedalism AT BEST.
AT WORST, given the amazing state of automation and technology today (not to mention the undeniable collapse of ecosystems and environment), I'm more worried that the elite will come to the realization that the working class are not as necessary as they used to be. 90% or more of us could be offed in one fashion or another and the elites would only know a dramatic uptick in wealth, sustainable futures, and dominance.
Ask not what your corporation can do you for (after all); ask what you can do your for corporation!
