By the time Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed that, "Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth," it was too late for the corporate-backed and monopolist-controlled Republican Party. It was too late in the sense that for most Republicans and their special moneyed-interest groups, who had earlier tried to block a Roosevelt presidency, their worst nightmare had come true. Not only did Roosevelt become president after the turn of the 20th century, but he understood how the tyranny of wealth had led to enormous economic disparities and working-class sacrifices. A major political and social revolution was knocking at the door.
Roosevelt himself had observed within his own party how the once progressive minded Radical Republicans, who sought freedom and civil rights protection for the America's slave populations during the Civil War, had been compromised by a corporate coup in 1877. A North-South reunification of industrialists and financiers quickly brought an end to any protection granted the newly freed slaves. The tyranny of the wealthy help bring an end to African American emancipation. It also trapped many of the nation's working classes and poor farmers, including whites, in economic and political circumstances beyond their control. Populism and Progressivism would soon demand economic equality.
Prior to Roosevelt's presidency, corporate corruption and banking institutions, ones that manipulated the money supply and monopolized goods and transportation, had caused repeated cycles of economic panics. Most Americans were in a state of shock and disbelief. Due to such corporate corruption in government and economic disparity, two presidents had been assassinated. One of them, President William McKinley, had chosen Roosevelt as a running mate. Still, Republican leaders used Roosevelt's charisma and heroic war record to win votes. They had hoped the relatively powerless position of vice president would quiet Roosevelt's reform-minded spirit.
Roosevelt's presidency was immediately faced with tightening markets, ones that were opened by the Spanish-American War and that had enriched wealthy monopolists. He recognized how a lack of government intervention and regulation in labor disputes and corporate mergers were leading to thousands of violent strikes and tens of thousands of workplace deaths each year. When Roosevelt sued J.P. Morgan's tyranny of wealth, railroad trust, and sided with Anthracite coal workers, he was merely echoing William Jennings Bryan warning: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."
Tyranny, or a cruel and unjust act committed by a person with great power, and wealth, or an abundance and great quantity of money and possession, had actually been addressed centuries earlier by the Spanish Moralist Tomas de Mercado. He believed that a major principal for the prosperity and happiness of a nation was to hold within itself a great quantity of money and an abundance of gold and silver. Most European governments, and then the U.S., believed this principle. They attempted to amass huge sums of wealth and possessions while also guarding against the export of money. But the belief that countries were to grow rich and to sell more than they buy caused adverse consequences.
European nations and the U.S., more specifically their wealthy elites, tried to evade impoverishment by hording money and regulating prices and markets and controlling imports and exports. They sought to establish empires in order to create controllable markets for goods and cheap resources and labor. Prosperity and happiness meant imperial conquests that killed millions, and that benefited only the very wealthy industrialists and capitalists. Those who adhered to this kind of tyrannical thinking and extreme wealth have yet to realize that the prosperity and happiness of a nation is based more upon if "everyone" shares and participates in a great quantity of money and abundance.
Tyranny of wealth also discounted the value of "all" life, or the lives of those who were economically disadvantaged or existing on meager wages. It placed a price only on gold and silver and the accumulation of money and material possessions. As money became more of an asset than other human beings, and as material possessions became overly personalized, even relational, workers and laborers became mere commodities. A class struggle for dignity, human rights, the value of labor and production, and a redistribution of wealth and power, had to occur. The Occupy Wall Street Movement is another class struggle. It is a reminder that the wealth of a nation resides in its people.
The Wall Street Occupiers have also brought attention to the wealthy elites war against the working classes. They embody the best of Theodore Roosevelt and the millions of Populists and Progressives that attempted to regulate corrupt corporations and the tyranny of wealth. They embody the millions of workers that have improved working-class conditions, and that have demanded more of an equal economic and political redistribution of wealth and power. Wall Street Occupiers also bring attention to how gold and silver and the amassing of possessions can be overvalued at the expense of educational and social services, infrastructural and communal needs, and liberty and self-actualization.
Still, Wall Street Occupiers are exposing demonic and destructive institutions, along with fatal practices imposed by America's wealthy tyrants. In Oakland, Wall Street Occupiers were brutally beaten, tear gassed, and then shot with rubber bullets. Several demonstrators were injured and falsely arrested. One U.S.-Iraq War veteran, Scott Olsen, was rushed to a hospital and is in serious condition after a police projectile was fired and crushed his skull. The tyranny of wealth always distorts and reverses democratic societies. Instead of protecting innocent people, some police attack and beat them. Instead of serving the majority of people, government officials and politicians submit to a few wealthy tyrants.
Can Wall Street Occupiers solve an old paradox, as Roosevelt and the Populists and Progressives attempted to do, in that, the reason why there is no money, gold, or silver is that there is too much, and the U.S. is poor because she is rich.(1) A solution might be a leveling of enormous economic disparity, or confronting the tyranny of wealth, the tyranny of Wall Street, and the tyranny of the wealthy. Another answer is to understand that true liberty is not only freedom from physical slavery, but also economic and political slavery and that compromise is usually futile. Remember what William Lloyd Garrison, an advocate for the abolition of slavery, wrote: "So perish all compromises with tyranny!"
Does this not include compromises with the tyranny of wealth?
Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)
(Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for
www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas' writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.)
(1) This quote is from economist Martin de Azpilcueta Navarro of Spain.
Source: http://article.wn.com/view/2011/10/27/Roosevelt_Wall_Street_Occupiers_and_Tyranny_of_Wealth/
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