As Always, Tony's Got It

In the P-G today, Tony casually and clearfully describes it all.

First he frames the situation of the Founding of this great great nation of ours:

As [Woody] Holton convincingly demonstrates in his 2007 book [The Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution], a cohort of the Founding Fathers feared "an excess of democracy" that could detract from America's potential as an investment opportunity for the great maritime powers of Western Europe.

Though they may have recently emerged from a bloody revolution against the British, they were interested in making the country a haven for the world's rich to park their excess cash.

The framers of the Constitution believed emphasizing federal power at the expense of individual liberty was the most efficient way to ensure the "pursuit of happiness" that they, the landed gentry, could get behind.

It's after the unruly crowd protested a government intent on protecting money instead of civil liberties that we got the Bill of Rights.

Yay! Go unruly crowd!!

And then Tony sums it up:

Two centuries later, it is considered "American" to accept the brutal facts of modern capitalism with equanimity. So what if 1 percent of the population controls a quarter of the wealth? So what if politicians in both parties are dedicated to perpetuating this evil status quo? As long as you have an opportunity to get rich in theory, what's the problem? Citizens who gather to make their voices heard over the cacophony of money in this country are routinely ridiculed as dreamers, anarchists and communists when all they're doing is participating in a tradition as old as America itself. If this is communism, then we need more of it.

Hear, hear.