[GELORA45] Bernie Sanders Delivered the Most Profound Speech Since We Lost MLK

[jonathango...@yahoo.com [GELORA45]]

 Published on
 Saturday, June 15, 2019


 by
 Common Dreams https://www.commondreams.org/

 Bernie Sanders Delivered the Most Profound Speech Since We Lost MLK by
 Ernest A. Canning https://www.commondreams.org/author/ernest-canning

 

 

 

 

 

 






 
 
https://commons.commondreams.org/t/bernie-sanders-delivered-the-most-profound-speech-since-we-lost-mlk/64624
 



 Audience members stand and clap as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. 
Bernie Sanders (I-VT) delivers remarks explaining democratic socialism at a 
campaign function in the Marvin Center at George Washington University on June 
12, 2019 in Washington, DC.  "President Trump and his fellow oligarchs hate 
democratic socialism because it benefits working people, but they absolutely 
love corporate socialism." (Photo by Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)



 
 We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth 
concentrated in the hands of the few, but we can’t have both.
– Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis
 It is not hyperbole to suggest that Senator Bernie Sanders's June 12, 2019 
Democratic Socialism Speech 
https://berniesanders.com/sanders-calls-for-21st-century-bill-of-rights/ was as 
profound as any delivered by either of the two men who Sanders frequently 
quoted: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  It was 
a speech in which the Vermont senator revealed that his campaign, and 
accompanying "political revolution", offer a unique vehicle for societal 
transformation—from what President Jimmy Carter described 
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jimmy-carter-u-s-is-an-oligarchy-with-unlimited-political-bribery-63262/
 as "an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery" to the realization of the 
promise offered by President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address 
http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm: 
"government of the people, by the people and for the people."
 Sanders brilliantly coupled a condemnation of the tyranny of capitalist 
oligarchy with FDR's recognition that democracy and freedom are unattainable in 
the absence of economic security. That message was so powerful that all three 
major corporate-owned cable networks—Fox "News", CNN and MSNBC—abruptly 
terminated their live coverage mid-speech. They did so before Sanders outlined 
what he described as a "21st Century Economic Bill of Rights". 
 Bernie noted that income and wealth inequality have soared to levels not seen 
since the onset of the Great Depression. "Three families," he said, “control 
more wealth than the bottom half of our country, some 160 million people."
 That was actually an understatement. As of 2017, America's three richest 
"individuals"—Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet—own as much wealth as 
the bottom 160 million, according to a report 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/11/09/the-3-richest-americans-hold-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-of-country-study-finds/#4cc594533cf8
 released by Institute for Policy Studies. "If left unchecked," Josh Hardy, the 
study's co-author observed, "wealth will continue to accumulate into fewer and 
fewer hands."
 Sanders underscored Hardy's point by noting that "49% of all new income today 
goes to the top 1%."
 The problem of gaping inequality is not limited to whether it leads to an 
unsustainable breaking point that can spiral into the next Great Depression. As 
explained by Kevin Phillips, in Wealth and Democracy 
http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Democracy-Political-History-American/dp/076790534, 
quoting political scientist Samuel Huntington:
 "Money becomes evil not when it is used to buy goods but when it is used to 
buy power…Economic inequalities become evil when they are translated into 
political inequalities." Political inequality, in turn, leads to more dangerous 
economic inequalities.
 Extreme inequality is dangerous because, in Sanders view, it paves the way for 
demagogues to exploit widespread anger and despair, as occurred in the 1930s. 
"Then, as now," Sanders proffered, "deeply-rooted and seemingly intractable 
economic and social disparities led to the rise of right-wing nationalist 
forces all over the world."
 "In Europe," Bernie added, "the anger and despair was ultimately harnessed by 
authoritarian demagogues who fused corporatism, nationalism, racism and 
xenophobia into a political movement that amassed totalitarian power, 
destroyed, and ultimately murdering millions of people—including members of my 
own family."
 In an offhand admonishment to the "it can't happen here" crowd—people who were 
shocked to see Neo-Nazis taking part in a torchlit march in 
Charlottesville—Sanders reminded us that "on February 20, 1939, over 20,000 
Nazis held a mass rally…in Madison Square Garden, in front of a 30-foot tall 
banner of George Washington—bordered with swastikas."
 Sanders, a self-described "democratic socialist", revealed that which 
political scientists have long known. Bernie is not a textbook socialist 
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism. He does not seek public 
ownership of the means of production. To the contrary, Sanders is essentially 
an FDR-like New Dealer, who calls for ordinary citizens to take on what FDR 
described as "the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, 
speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war 
profiteering."
 Sanders, quoting Dr. Martin Luther King (“We all too often have socialism for 
the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor”), transformed the word 
"socialism" from a right-wing epithet into a useful tool for exposing 
right-wing hypocrisy. "President Trump and his fellow oligarchs," Bernie 
observed, "hate democratic socialism because it benefits working people, but 
they absolutely love corporate socialism". Examples of "corporate socialism" 
include massive government subsidies and tax breaks, the pharmaceutical 
industry profiting from public research, and a $700 billion Wall Street bailout 
that was accompanied by trillions of dollars in federal interest-free loans.
 Bernie made a general reference to government subsidies received by the Trump 
Organization. In the future, he'd do well to specifically point to the $157 
million 
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/watch-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-question-michael-cohen-about-trump-tax-returns.html
 in New York taxpayer monies used to build the privately-owned Trump golf 
course in the Bronx.
 Without mentioning them by name, Sanders demolished the concept of "freedom" 
as advanced by self-described "libertarians", like the rapacious Koch brothers. 
 Theirs is a vice-into-virtue ideology that extols individual greed as a virtue 
and rejects the very existences of a public interest beyond individual or group 
self-interest. It is a philosophy that is at odds with a core purpose of 
government, explicitly recognized by the U.S. Constitution—"to Promote the 
General Welfare."
 The "freedom" the Koch brothers extol is the unfettered ability of the 
privileged few to amass enormous wealth at the expense of the many. But, as 
first FDR, and now Bernie Sanders, forcefully observed, for the rest of us, 
there can be neither democracy nor "freedom" without economic security. After 
noting that extreme wealth inequality not only has a detrimental impact on the 
quality of life but has also produced a significant disparity in life 
expectancy, Bernie asked a series of rhetorical questions to drive home the 
point, e.g., "Are you truly free, if you cannot afford the prescription drug 
you need to stay alive?"
 Sanders then argued for a "21st Century Bill of Economic Rights" in order to 
complete FDR's "unfinished" New Deal. This would include the rights to "a 
decent job that pays a living wage," to quality healthcare, a complete 
education, affordable housing, a secure retirement and to a clean environment. 
That, Bernie proclaimed, is the essence of "democratic socialism."