Social progress in the United States can be characterized as an ongoing effort to equalize the rights and opportunities of all citizens. As we all know, our nascent democracy only enfranchised white males as voters, and the movements that brought equal voting rights to both genders and all skin colors were not successful for two centuries. Fortunately today we can say that, despite some lingering de facto discrimination against certain voting groups, we live in a country which guarantees the right to vote to all law abiding citizens. I think very few Americans would take the position that the right to vote ought to be restricted to a certain subset of citizens. So then, we must agree that each citizen, regardless of race or gender or religious preference, has a right to equal representation in the government. One person, one vote. Why is this?
The staunchest supporters of Citizens United and unlimited Super-PAC contributions have taken the position that giving money to political causes is merely an exercise in free speech. That is to say, they don’t make the case (though they may quietly believe) that having vast wealth at one’s disposal entitles one to more voting power, but only to more (and louder) speech. So the elite capitalist with as much money as 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 average Americans only asks for the same voting power as an unemployed person on welfare or disability. I am not making a moral or philosophical case here, nor am I suggesting that a different distribution of voting power would be preferable; it seems to me a self-evident fact that a person who controls more capital, pays more taxes, employs other people, consumes more goods and services, and in short comprises an outsize portion of the economy has more interest in the governance of the country than a person who survives by accepting handouts. It also seems self-evident that an electorate restricted to only the most intelligent and well-informed citizens will likely appoint representatives and officials who are more competent, as opposed to professional politicians who excel only at convincing voters to support them. Despite these contentions, as a society we don’t seem interested in restricting voting rights to either the more productive or the more intelligent citizens but rather we maintain that a low-producing person of below-average intelligence shall have as much voting power as anybody else. Clearly, we seem comfortable with the idea that choosing your leaders is somehow an essential right of humans.
This is a curious idea for our country to maintain when one considers how effectively we have been inculcated with the propaganda of capitalism. So many Americans are able to maintain the apparently disparate ideas of unequal allocation of resources and equal allocation of political power without ever realizing the contradicting fundamentals of each.
Socialism is a dirty word in the United States, although I am fairly certain that most Americans don’t have an accurate understanding of what it means. At its core, Socialism is simply about fairness. That all people, regardless of birth, God-given abilities, or luck, ought to have the opportunity to succeed and live in prosperity and dignity. Prosperity and dignity are, of course, relative terms. In a society such as ours the product of our national labor is large enough for all citizens who wish to contribute to have education, healthcare, nutritious food, an expectation of security, and some leisure time. Instead we allow the product to be divided such that a few have such staggering wealth that they literally don’t know what to do with it (which is to say that their accumulation of wealth has passed the point of diminishing returns), while many go without education, without healthcare, with no prospects of retirement, etc. Again, withholding moral judgment, it seems strange to me that the majority would be okay with this economic arrangement while simultaneously believing fervently in the necessity of a democratic distribution of voting power. Their mantra could be summarized as, "Government by consent of the governed, equal distribution of power to all, regardless of intellect, industriousness, or fortune; unequal distribution of resources, determined by intellect, industriousness, and fortune."
I suppose the simplest explanation is this: the many have been hoodwinked by a wealthy and ambitious few, and been made into ignorant accomplices in the looting of the public wealth. As to why the wealthy want more, more, always more, instead of being advocates and champions of the masses, I cannot say. That is a question for psychologists.
