Trần Thanh Tịnh - Dăm đại gia nắm nửa già thế giới

TS James B. Glattfelder, nhà toán học trẻ tuổi ở Viện Công nghệ Cao cấp Zurich (Thụy Sĩ) đã phát hiện ra rằng, chỉ có 147 công ty hiện đang sở hữu nửa già số của cải trên hành tinh chúng ta. Và đó mới chỉ là phần nổi của tảng băng chìm. Tồn tại nguy cơ rằng, “mạnh vì gạo, bạo vì tiền”, thế giới có thể đang bị chi phối bởi một nhóm dăm ba cự phú đã tập trung vào tay mình đại bộ phận nguồn lực của nhân gian.

Phát hiện lớn từ những điều đơn giản nhất

Viện Công nghệ  Cao cấp Zurich (Thụy Sĩ) là một trung tâm trí tuệ nổi tiếng thế giới với những tên tuổi rất lừng lẫy của hơn 20 nhà khoa học từng được nhận giải Nobel. Đây cũng là nơi làm việc của nhà thiết kế tên lửa đạn đạo đầu tiên trên thế giới (V-2) Wernher von Braun (1912-1977). Nhà khoa học đại tài này từng phục vụ cho chế độ Quốc xã nhưng sau Chiến tranh thế giới thứ hai, bí mật sang Mỹ cư trú và trở thành công dân Mỹ, cũng đã làm việc cho dự án tên lửa đạn đạo liên lục địa ở đây, rồi gia nhập đội ngũ Cơ quan hàng không vũ trụ Hoa Kỳ (NASA) với chức vụ Giám đốc Trung tâm vũ trụ Marshall và Kiến trúc sư trưởng của tên lửa vũ trụ Saturn đưa các nhà du hành Mỹ đặt chân lên mặt trăng…

Chính tại trung tâm trí tuệ này mà TS James B. Glattfelder đã khởi xướng dự án riêng độc đáo của mình để tìm hiểu về việc: liệu có mối liên hệ bí mật nào hay không giữa những công ty hàng đầu thế giới?  Dự án này nảy sinh từ một câu hỏi xem ra không có gì phức tạp: trên thế giới hiện đang hoạt động ít nhất là gần 37 triệu công ty, tức là có ít nhất cũng gần 37 triệu CEO (giám đốc điều hành). Liệu giữa họ có mối liên hệ nào không? Biết đâu giữa họ cũng có những thân bằng cố hữu? Hoặc bạn đồng môn? Biết đâu, nhiều người trong số lãnh đạo các công ty này lại phụ thuộc vào nhau bởi các mối quan hệ trên dưới, ngang dọc trong các công ty mẹ và công ty con, hoặc trong các tập đoàn?

Trong thời đại thông tin rộng mở hiện nay, tìm ra câu trả lời cho một vấn đề tưởng chừng nhiêu khê như thế không quá dễ nhưng cũng không phải quá khó. Và câu trả lời hiện ra rất đáng kinh hãi: Dường như thế giới hiện nay đang bị điều hành chỉ bởi một “siêu tập đoàn” và chính nó đang giật dây mọi sự đang diễn ra trên quy mô toàn cầu.

Để xây dựng mô hình toán học của hệ thống siêu tập đoàn toàn cầu, các chuyên gia dưới sự chỉ đạo của TS James B. Glattfelder đã phải xử lý một khối lượng khổng lồ các dữ liệu phản ánh các mối quan hệ sở hữu giữa các công ty xuyên quốc gia hàng đầu trên thế giới. Theo lời TS James B. Glattfelder, “hiện thực phức tạp tới mức chúng tôi đã phải rời bỏ các giáo điều sẵn có, kể cả lý thuyết âm mưu (conspiracy theory) hay lý thuyết thị trường tự do. Những phân tích của chúng tôi chỉ dựa trên những dữ liệu thực tế”.

Bằng các thuật toán của mình, phân tích các dữ liệu về 37 triệu công ty và các nhà đầu tư có trên máy chủ Orbis C từ năm 2007, TS James B. Glattfelder cùng các đồng nghiệp  đã  lọc ra chỉ còn một nhóm tương đối độc lập hơn gồm 1.318 công ty mà quan hệ giữa chúng với nhau khó có thể gọi bằng từ gì khác ngoài “chung một dòng máu”. Mỗi một công ty trong nhóm này bị phát hiện là có những mối liên hệ chặt chẽ với hai hoặc từ ba công ty khác trở lên (chỉ số trung bình các công ty mang tính họ hàng này là 20!). Và mặc dầu thu nhập chính thức của các công ty này không vượt quá 20% lợi nhuận kinh doanh toàn cầu chung nhưng thông qua các công ty con của mình, chúng gần như sở hữu đại bộ phận các hãng trên thế  giới hoạt động trong khu vực kinh tế “thực tế”. Bằng cách này, vòi bạch tuộc của các “tập đoàn khủng long” nắm trong tay khoảng 60% doanh thu toàn cầu.

Rồi từ đó, các nhà khoa học lại lọc tiếp để có danh sách 147 công ty có  quan hệ với nhau chặt chẽ và rõ ràng hơn. Cổ phiếu của những công ty này giao cắt nhau tới mức trong thực tế chúng cùng tạo nên một tổng hòa  tài chính kiểm soát tới 40%  vốn liếng của thế giới.

Từ nhóm trên, TS James B. Glattfelder cùng các đồng nghiệp lại lọc tiếp ra một top-ten các công ty “siêu hàng đầu” (danh sách này có thể thay đổi theo thời gian), có thể được coi như là 10 đại gia còn gắn bó với nhau siêu hơn nữa. 10 công ty này chung nhau ở một số rất ít “cự phú” (giấu mặt) nào đó. Thí dụ như một công ty bề ngoài cực nhỏ nào đó ở bang X nơi thâm sơn cùng cốc  nào đó của nước Mỹ…

Đồng “tiền” tương ứng

Dưới con mắt của TS James B. Glattfelder, 10 công ty hàng đầu đó chủ yếu ở hai nước Mỹ và Anh. Đó là:
1. Barclays (Anh, giá trị cổ phiếu: 55 tỉ USD; lãnh đạo: Marcus Agius thuộc gia tộc Rothschild; hoạt động trong lĩnh vực tài chính); 
2. Capital Group (Mỹ, 1 nghìn tỉ USD; David Fisher, thành viên Hội đồng quản lý Quỹ Tiền tệ thế giới; tài chính); 
3. FMR Corporation (3,3 nghìn tỉ USD; Mỹ; gia đình Johnson; tài chính); 
4. AXA (90 tỉ USD; Pháp; Henri de Castries, thành viên đời thứ năm của dòng họ Castries; bảo hiểm); 
5. State Street Corporation (730 triệu USD; Mỹ; Jay Hooley, thành viên Diễn đàn dịch vụ tài chính; tài chính); 
6. JP Morgan Chase (2,3 nghìn tỉ USD; Mỹ; James Dimon, cựu lãnh đạo City - Group; tài chính); 
7.Legal & General Group  (500 tỉ USD; Anh; John Stewart; tài chính); 
8. Vanguard Group (1,6 nghìn tỉ USD; Mỹ; William McNabb, cựu thành viên chính phủ; đầu tư);  
9. UBS AG (1,7 nghìn tỉ USD; Thụy Sĩ; Sergio Ermotti, từng làm việc ở UniCredit và Merrill Lynch; tài chính, ngân hàng); 
10. Merrill Lynch & Co. (1,6 nghìn tỉ USD; Mỹ; được Bank of America mua lại; tài chính).

Có thể thấy rằng, lãnh đạo các hãng lớn này đều thuộc loại tinh hoa quốc tế. Thí dụ như Marcus Agius (sinh năm 1946) chẳng hạn, được đánh giá là một trong những đại diện xuất sắc nhất của gia tộc Rothschild từ thế kỷ XVIII tới nay vốn đã có không ít những anh tài trong lĩnh vực ngân hàng, tài chính. Marcus Agius từng học ở Trường Cao đẳng St. George, Weybridge và từng có bằng thạc sĩ  MBA về cơ khí và kinh tế tại Trinity Hall, Cambridge và tại Trường Kinh doanh Harvard.

Marcus Agius vào làm Giám đốc không điều hành Tập đoàn Barclays từ ngày 1/9/2006 và từ ngày 1/1/2007 lên làm Chủ tịch hội đồng giám đốc ở đây. Ông cũng là Giám đốc không điều hành trong ban quản trị mới của Hãng BBC. Mức lương hàng năm của ông tại Tập đoàn Barclays là 750 nghìn USD…

Các nhà lãnh đạo khác trong các công ty thuộc top-ten trên có thể không phải “con dòng cháu giống” như Marcus Agius nhưng cũng từng ở những vị trí lãnh đạo ở nhiều đơn vị kinh tế lừng lẫy khác cũng thuộc top-ten này. Bởi vậy, rất đáng ngạc nhiên nếu những công ty này không duy trì những mối quan hệ thân hữu ngoài luồng với nhau ngay cả trong hiện tại. Trong khi đó để tìm các nhà quản lý chuyên nghiệp trước đây không hề dính líu tới top-ten này để giao cho họ nhiệm vụ quản lý chúng là một việc đâu có quá phức tạp.

Cũng rất dễ thấy rằng, các nhà quản lý lừng lẫy đang trụ ở những vị trí quan trọng ở các công ty thuộc top-ten trên thường là đồng môn, tức là đã cùng học, có thể trong những giai đoạn khác nhau, ở một số học đường thượng lưu nào đó.

Trong tiểu sử các nhà quản lý trên còn có những chi tiết khá thú vị. Có người trong số họ từng là thành viên nội các (như William McNabb ở Vanguard Group). Người khác từng làm việc tại IMF (như David Fisher ở Capital Group)… Còn như Jay Hooley ở State Street Corporation thì còn tham gia cả Diễn đàn dịch vụ tài chính. Địa chỉ của Diễn đàn này là ở Washington và như được giới thiệu một cách mù mờ trong tiểu sử chính thức của Hooley, đó là “một tổ chức không chính thức liên kết 18 nhà quản trị doanh nghiệp”.Thực sự chỉ là “liên kết” thôi ư? Một khi những CEO thành đạt mang dáng vẻ người Anh - Saxon (Hooley đúng là người có ngoại hình như thế) gặp mặt nhau thì họ sẽ làm gì? Chỉ ngồi bên lò sửa uống whisky thôi ư? Hay chỉ chơi golf thôi ư? Ai mà biết được!

Tiềm ẩn nguy cơ

Nếu thực sự thế giới đang bị giật dây bởi một nhóm nhỏ dăm ba những siêu tập đoàn như trong công trình nghiên cứu của TS James B. Glattfelder và các đồng sự, điều gì sẽ xảy ra? Thực ra, hiện tượng trên không có gì mới mà đã từng được mô tả trong các trước tác của Lênin. Và các nhà nghiên cứu người Anh và người Đức cũng đã từng đề cập tới việc này trước Lênin. Đồng tiền bắt đầu ra mặt cai quản hệ thống chính trị thế giới từ những năm đầu tiên của thế kỷ XX. Tuy nhiên, trong thời đại hiện nay, khi tài nguyên thiên nhiên và các nguồn năng lượng ngày càng cạn kiệt, vấn đề trên sẽ trở nên trầm trọng và nguy hiểm hơn.

Theo nhận định của chuyên viên người Nga Aleksandr Osin trong trao đổi với phóng viên báo Komsomolskaya Pravda, cuộc khủng hoảng tài chính kinh tế hiện nay tất yếu sẽ làm nảy sinh cuộc chiến tranh công khai giữa các chính phủ “chính danh” với các thể chế trong “bóng râm” như các tập đoàn siêu quốc gia. Mục tiêu của các tập đoàn siêu quốc gia này là giành cho mình toàn quyền điều hành. Có thể ở thời điểm hiện nay, cán cân thế lực vẫn chưa nghiêng về phía các tập đoàn xuyên lục địa có tiềm lực kinh tế thậm chí là lớn hơn cả trữ lượng của một số quốc gia nhưng hơi thở lạnh của chúng thổi vào gáy các định chế hợp hiến không phải là không làm e ngại.

Nói rằng đang tồn tại một chính phủ toàn cầu ngoài luồng nào đó của các doanh nghiệp cỡ bự có thể là hơi sớm nhưng thực sự là đang tồn tại một nguy cơ như thế. Và đấy cũng là một trong những lý do khiến nảy sinh phong trào biểu tình “Chiếm phố Wall” chống lại sự chi phối quá đà của giới làm ăn, phát sinh từ nước Mỹ và lan rộng ra trên thế giới

Have Corporations Become Too Powerful?

Phỏng vấn tác giả David Rothkopf của cuốn sách mang tựa đề: "Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government — And the Reckoning That Lies Ahead".  Ông này cho biết rằng có 2000 công ty-tập đoàn tư nhân có sức mạnh, ảnh hưởng trên TG hơn 50 đến 80 quốc gia. ExxonMobil có thu nhập hằng năm khoảng $350 tỉ, gần bằng GDP của Thụy điển, hơn gấp 3 lần GDP của VN. Số quốc gia có sự hiện diện làm ăn của ExxonMobil lớn hơn gấp đôi số quốc gia mà Thụy điển có tòa đại sứ.

Số công nhân khắp nơi trên TG của Walmart đông hơn dân số của 100 nước. Thu nhập hàng năm của Walmart chỉ thấp hơn GDP của 25 nước đứng đầu TG.
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By Morgan Korn | Daily Ticker

Have corporations become too powerful?

Few would disagree that the world's biggest companies appear to have as much influence — if not more — than sovereign nation states.

David Rothkopf argues in his new book, "Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government — And the Reckoning That Lies Ahead" that there "are probably 2,000" private-sector companies who have "more impact, more leverage and more global reach than 50 to 80 countries." These corporations are increasingly exerting their power and clout in the legislative and regulatory spheres, resulting in a new and alarming world power structure.

"They're bigger and more powerful than most people have imagined, including people who really ought to be paying attention to these things," Rothkopf says in an interview with The Daily Ticker. "We need to rein in and balance out this power."

Rothkopf uses ExxonMobil (XOM) and Wal-Mart (WMT) as two examples of corporations where the balance of power has tilted in favor of big business. Exxon, the world's second largest company after Apple (AAPL), operates in more than twice as many countries as Sweden has embassies.

Exxon's annual sales, which totaled $350 billion in 2011, were almost equal to Sweden's GDP. Exxon spent more money on political lobbying than Sweden did on its foreign policy in 2010, Rothkopf notes. As for Wal-Mart, one of the largest employers in the world, its employees greatly outnumber the populations of more than 100 countries. Wal-Mart's sales revenues are higher "than the GDPs of all but 25 countries," according to Rothkopf.

There are many more eye-popping examples in Rothkopf's "Power, Inc."

Investment firm BlackRock has more assets under management ($3.5 trillion) than China has in hard-currency reserves. International Paper owns more land than the country of Panama. And the $33.5 billion-endowed Gates Foundation gave more to charitable causes worldwide in 2010 than the World Health Organization had in its annual budget.

The influence of big business on politics has intensified after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Citizens United case that allowed corporations and unions to give unlimited campaign contributions. These millions of dollars in donations to super PACS have forever changed how elections in the U.S. are managed and operated. The movement to overturn the Supreme Court's landmark decision has been mounting at the state and national level but it will require a constitutional amendment to reverse the damage already done.

Rothkopf says there are government policies that can offset and counteract the phenomenon of corporate power.

"We need to get money out of politics, we need campaign finance reform, we need shorter elections, federally financed elections…and we need a fair tax system in this country," he says. "Money has such a huge and disproportionate and corrupting influence on politics."

If the U.S. does not fix these imbalances, Rothkopf warns, it will lead to income inequality, financial crises and very possibly a less competitive U.S. Furthermore, unchecked special interests have already squashed important and necessary legislation on climate change, financial regulation and labor and health issues he says.

9/10/2001: Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon

The War On Waste

February 11, 2009 9:17 PM

ByAleen Sirgany .On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.

He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.

"In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death," he said.

Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.

Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."

More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

Minnery, a former Marine turned whistle-blower, is risking his job by speaking out for the first time about the millions he noticed were missing from one defense agency's balance sheets. Minnery tried to follow the money trail, even crisscrossing the country looking for records.

"The director looked at me and said 'Why do you care about this stuff?' It took me aback, you know? My supervisor asking me why I care about doing a good job," said Minnery.

He was reassigned and says officials then covered up the problem by just writing it off.

"They have to cover it up," he said. "That's where the corruption comes in. They have to cover up the fact that they can't do the job."

The Pentagon's Inspector General "partially substantiated" several of Minnery's allegations but could not prove officials tried "to manipulate the financial statements."

Twenty years ago, Department of Defense Analyst Franklin C. Spinney made headlines exposing what he calls the "accounting games." He's still there, and although he does not speak for the Pentagon, he believes the problem has gotten worse.

"Those numbers are pie in the sky. The books are cooked routinely year after year," he said.

Another critic of Pentagon waste, Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, commanded the Navy's 2nd Fleet the first time Donald Rumsfeld served as Defense Secretary, in 1976.

In his opinion, "With good financial oversight we could find $48 billion in loose change in that building, without having to hit the taxpayers."


©MMII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved Copyright 2009 CBS. All rights reserved.

AP - Lawyers: Bullet was switched at Sirhan's trial

By LINDA DEUTSCH

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lawyers representing convicted assassinSirhan Sirhan argue in newly filed court documents that a bullet was switched in evidence at his trial and new forensic details show he is innocent of the 1968 killing of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

In the latest of many appeals filed on behalf of Sirhan, the attorneys are seeking to overturn his conviction. They repeated a previous assertion and presented reports from experts who said Sirhan was programmed through hypnosis to fire shots as a diversion for the real killer.

Prosecutors had no comment, said Lynda Gledhill, a spokeswoman for the California attorney general's office, which is handling the appeal.

The lawyers, William F. Pepper and Laurie Dusek, also said sophisticated audio tests recently conducted on recordings from the assassination night show 13 shots from multiple guns were fired — five more than Sirhan could have fired from his small pistol.

Sirhan Sirhan, now 66, convicted of assassinating Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, …

Authorities have claimed eight bullets were fired, with three hitting Kennedy and the rest flying wildly around the kitchen and striking five other victims who survived.

Paul Schrade, who was struck by gunfire, refused to comment on the new filing, saying he is working on his own new analysis of the assassination.

Pepper and Dusek argue that before Sirhan's trial, someone switched a bullet before it was placed in evidence because the bullet taken from Kennedy's neck did not match Sirhan's gun. The lawyers suggest a second gun was involved in the assassination, but they do not know who fired it.

Pepper said the new evidence outlined in a 62-page federal courtbrief filed in Los Angeles is sufficient to prove Sirhan is innocent under the law.

"They put fabricated evidence into court before the judge and jury"Pepper told The Associated Press. "We are satisfied that for the first time in 43 years of this case we think we have the evidence to set this conviction aside,"

The motion was filed last week in federal court in Los Angeles

Whether it has any chance of success is questionable, said leading appellate lawyer Dennis Fischer of Santa Monica.

"It's a longshot in the longest way," he said, "but they certainly are raising intriguing questions."

He said the passage of time weighs against defense appeals, with courts tending to ask what took so long to raise the issues. However, he said federal courts frequently are willing to take a closer look at cases in which governmental misconduct is alleged, even if it is long after the fact.

"The current thinking by the U.S. Supreme Court is these things need to end," said Fischer. But he added in case with such historical importance, "No one will ever be satisfied."

Sirhan, now 67, a Palestinian immigrant, was denied parole after a hearing last March where he denied any memory of shooting Kennedy on June 5, 1968, moments after he claimed victory in the California presidential primary.

Parole officials said he doesn't understand the enormity of his crime that changed U.S. history.

Pepper and Dusek are the latest attorneys to take up Sirhan's case after his conviction and argue on his behalf before parole boards and courts.. All of his appeals have been turned down. Pepper, who has taken on other unpopular cases including that of Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray, stepped in after Sirhan's previous lawyer died.

At trial, Sirhan took the witness stand and said he had killed Kennedy "with 20 years of malice aforethought." He later recanted the confession. Prosecutors introduced in evidence handwritten diaries in which he wrote: "RFK must die."

The latest filing by Pepper and Dusek relies heavily on a report by audio analyst Philip Van Praag who did tests on an audio recording made by a news reporter during the shooting. The expert concluded that 13 shots were fired and that none of the sounds on the recording were echoes or other anomalies.

The report also claims that the sounds of gunfire were not isolated to one spot in the room but came from different directions.

The lawyers also contend that Sirhan did not have adequate assistance of counsel at trial, noting that his chief attorney, Grant Cooper, decided Sirhan was guilty at the outset and never pursued available defenses.

The Sirhan defense team settled on a claim of diminished capacity and never denied that Sirhan was the shooter of Kennedy, the brief noted.

"Defense counsel did not pursue the issue of a possible substitution of another bullet," the brief said.

Acknowledging "the difficulty of retrying a case of this vintage," the lawyers asked that the sentence be set aside and Sirhan set free.

"Petitioner fully understands that he is likely to be deported to Jordan where he would hope to quietly live out the rest of his life with family and friends, but at long last he would, at least, have received long delayed justice," the filing states.

As an alternative, they asked that the judge set an evidentiary hearing to reexamine the case.

http://news.yahoo.com/lawyers-bullet-switched-sirhans-trial-231726566.html

BBC News - Free market flawed, says survey

Thị trường tư do đã sai lầm.   Một cuộc thăm dò dư luận của BBC World Service cho thấy. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- By James Robbins  Diplomatic correspondent, BBC News The fall of the wall looked like a crushing victory for capitalism Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new BBC poll has found widespread dissatisfaction with free-market capitalism. In the global poll for the BBC World Service, only 11% of those questioned across 27 countries said that it was working well. Most thought regulation and reform of the capitalist system were necessary. There were also sharp divisions around the world on whether the end of the Soviet Union was a good thing. Economic regulation In 1989, as the Berlin Wall fell, it was a victory for ordinary people across Eastern and Central Europe. It also looked at the time like a crushing victory for free-market capitalism. A Frankfurt trader tries to deal during the 2008 banking crisis Twenty years on, this new global poll suggests confidence in free markets has taken heavy blows from the past 12 months of financial and economic crisis. More than 29,000 people in 27 countries were questioned. In only two countries, the United States and Pakistan, did more than one in five people feel that capitalism works well as it stands. Almost a quarter - 23% of those who responded - feel it is fatally flawed. That is the view of 43% in France, 38% in Mexico and 35% in Brazil. And there is very strong support around the world for governments to distribute wealth more evenly. That is backed by majorities in 22 of the 27 countries. If there is one issue where a global consensus seems to emerge from the survey it is this: there are majorities almost everywhere wanting government to be more active in regulating business. It is only in Turkey that a majority want less government regulation. Opinion about the disintegration of the Soviet Union is sharply divided. Europeans overwhelmingly say it was a good thing: 79% in Germany, 76% in Britain and 74% in France feel that way. But outside the developed West it is a different picture. Almost seven in 10 Egyptians say the end of the Soviet Union was a bad thing and views are sharply divided in India, Kenya and Indonesia.

Robert Schlesinger - Eisenhower's 'Military-Industrial Complex' and JFK's Inaugural

What we can learn 50 years later from Ike's farewell and Kennedy's summoning trumpets

Few speeches pass the test of time. Today's landmark address lingers as moldering rhetoric, the esoteric purview of specialized scholars, or fades from memory entirely. The speech that resonates decades later is rare—more so when two such addresses occurred within days of each other.

Yet this month we mark the 50th anniversary of two such addresses. The first, Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address, on Jan. 17, 1961, drew relatively little attention at the time but gathered prophetic force over the years. Three days later, John F. Kennedy's inaugural address hit the nation like an energy bolt, galvanizing a generation.

A half century later, the speeches remain relevant.

[See 5 Lessons From JFK and Eisenhower]

Interestingly, Ike's first idea for a farewell address appears only in passing in the famous speech, but it's still worth recalling. His earliest concept for the address was outlined in a May 1959 memorandum summarizing a meeting of some of the president's top advisers, including his brother Milton: "Speech stresses the need for common sense to accommodate the broad range of belief in the political spectrum of America, particularly in an era when the nation may have an Executive of one Party and a Congress of another." The next day, Ike wrote Milton, then president of Johns Hopkins University, "The purpose would be to emphasize a few homely truths that apply to the responsibilities and duties of a government that must be responsive to the will of majorities, even when the decisions of those majorities create apparent paradoxes."

The phrase "common sense" is today so overused as to be commonly nonsensical, and that broad range encompassing the American political spectrum has become Balkanized, with too many factions—from the Tea Party movement to the so-called professional left—convinced that they alone represent its breadth. But both extremes neglect that, as Ike observed, the people's will is often contradictory. Recall the recent protests that the government better keep its hands off Medicare.

[See 2010: The year in pictures.]

Of course, a speech warning against the gathering dangers of partisanship would not have carried the force of a decorated general speaking out against the "acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military -industrial complex." Talk about an admonition that still rings as we inexorably approach a 10th year of global conflict. The Boston Globe reported last month that 80 percent of retiring three- and four-star officers in recent years have taken jobs as defense industry consultants or executives, up from less than 50 percent in the mid-1990s. This trend is startling and dangerous. As the Atlantic's James Fallows (a former U.S. News editor) observes, it represents a form of "structural corruption" infecting the system.

Another less-noted passage from Eisenhower's speech is also worth remembering. Warning about the dangers of scientific research becoming too dominated by government, Ike inveighed against "the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." In 50 years, not only have Eisenhower's fears not been borne out in this regard, but the pendulum has swung dangerously in the other direction. We now endure an age of "truthiness" where the notion of esoteric knowledge is held in disdain: WebMD has made us doctors, blogs have made us pundits, and anyone who has read the Constitution fancies herself or himself a scholar. No need to pay attention to those eggheads going on about global warming; the Internet has made us all climatologists debating the relative merits of the science.

But Eisenhower's farewell was delivered in the shadow cast by the generational torch that was about to be passed. The glow from that fire truly did "light the world" for that generation and others succeeding it.

There's a certain irony in the fact that the inaugural address, with its summoning trumpets and mellifluous "ask-nots," remains JFK's best-known speech. The truth is that he didn't like flowery imagery or rhetorical excess. "The inaugural was a special occasion and there was a special tone in that speech," Kennedy's speechwriter, the late Ted Sorensen, told me when I was writing White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters. "It was more elevated language."

Kennedy had a rare sense of the bully pulpit, neither undervaluing it nor overestimating its power. On one hand, JFK was "deeply—excessively—skeptical about the value of speeches per se," my father, aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr., wrote in his diary at the time. Kennedy understood that talk alone cannot itself bend history. But he also understood that given the proper context, a speech can catalyze a moment and help shape events, as with his three great addresses from June 1963: the American University speech on world peace, his civil rights address to the nation the following day, and his stirring talk at the Berlin Wall.

[See the Obamas Behind the Scenes.]

It's a lesson that Barack Obama needs to absorb as his presidency shifts to a more exhortative stage, with an obstinate GOP controlling the House. He seems to have taken too much to heart Mario Cuomo's aphorism that we campaign in poetry but govern in prose (which Hillary Clinton used against Obama during the 2008 primaries). In fact, governing sometimes requires poetry, speaking not simply to the head as Obama does with such professorial skill, but to the heart or the gut. As the president is unhappily having to demonstrate today, the bully pulpit must sometimes be used to express national outrage and national grief—drama, in other words, from a chief executive who prides himself on being "no drama."

AlterNet - Conservatives Want America to be a "Christian Nation" - Here's What That Would Actually Look Like

By Adam Lee

Let's compare Rick Perry's version of "Christian values" to what the Bible really dictates.

October 4, 2011

 

In a campaign speech in September, Rick Perry hit upon some familiar Republican themes. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek article:

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, in an appeal to evangelical voters, said "Christian values" and not "a bunch of Washington politicians" should be the touchstone guiding how Americans conduct their lives. ...

"America is going to be guided by some set of values," Perry told a crowd of 13,000 students and faculty members yesterday at a sports arena on the school's campus. "The question is going to be, 'Whose values?'" He said it should be "those Christian values that this country was based upon."

It's worth calling attention to Perry's obnoxious rhetorical ploy of using "Christian values" to refer only to his own very specific, right-wing set of beliefs -- preemptive war, gay-bashing, tax cuts for the rich, creationism in schools, deregulating corporations, dismantling the social safety net, the standard Republican package -- as if he owned or had the right to define all of Christianity. In reality, there's such a huge diversity of opinion among self-professed Christians past and present that the term "Christian values" could mean almost anything.

Christians have been communists and socialists (including Francis Bellamy, the author of the Pledge of Allegiance); Christians have supported empire and dictatorship (including Mussolini, who made Catholicism the official state religion of fascist Italy). Christians have advocated positions across the political spectrum, from environmental preservation to environmental destruction, from pacifism to just war to open advocacy of genocide, from civil rights to segregation and slavery.

This broad range of opinion comes about because the Bible never mentions many of these issues, and addresses others in only vague or contradictory passages scattered throughout its individual books. This gives individual Christians wide latitude to find support in the text for virtually any political position you'd care to name.

However, there's one area where there's much less room for debate, and that's the question of political organization. The Bible sets out a very clear picture of what its authors believed the ideal state would look like. Coincidentally, this is the same subject Rick Perry was speaking to: "those Christian values that this country was based upon." We can compare this statement to the dictates of the Bible to see what it would mean to have a government based on "Christian values." Then we'll be in a better position to decide whether America has such a government.

According to the Old Testament of the Bible, after escaping Egypt and reaching the promised land, the twelve tribes of Israel were united into a single country under David and Solomon. After Solomon's death, there was a rebellion, and the country split into two separate kingdoms, Israel and Judah, which lasted until the Assyrian empire destroyed Israel and carried its people off into exile. Both these kingdoms survived for several hundred years, and therefore there's more than enough written history to tell what the Bible's authors thought of as a good state or a bad state.

But right away, there's a problem. The Bible never even mentions democracy -- that concept was completely unknown to its authors. The system of government it enshrines is divine-right monarchy -- and not just monarchy, but kingship. Under normal circumstances, the Bible is very clear that the throne passes only from father to son. (The sole exception was Athaliah, a queen of Judah who came to power in a bloody coup and whose reign lasted only six years.)

Even more to the point, the Bible's ideal government is unequivocally a theocracy: a country where the church and the state are one, where there's an official religion which all citizens are required to profess, and where law is made by the priests. There was no religious freedom in the ancient Israelite kingdoms: all people were required to worship the same god in the same officially approved ways, on pain of death. For instance, when Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai and finds the Israelites worshipping a golden calf, his immediate response is to order the butchering of everyone who participated in idolatry (Exodus 32:27). Many of Israel's subsequent kings do likewise. The Bible goes so far as to say that, if pagan worshippers are discovered in any city, the entire city should be burned down and everyone who lives there should be killed (Deuteronomy 13:12-16).

The Bible also puts a high value on racial purity. The Israelites were the chosen people of God, and were instructed to keep themselves separate. Time and again, they were sternly warned against marrying people of another race, tribe or ethnicity. For instance, the Old Testament pronounces a perpetual curse on the neighboring Ammonite and Moabite tribes, saying that any person descended from either one, even down to the tenth generation, "shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 23:3). In one of the Old Testament's most gruesome stories, a priest named Phinehas finds an Israelite man having sex with a Midianite woman, and impales them both on the same spear (Numbers 25:6-8). For doing this, he's praised as a hero of faith, and God rewards him with "the covenant of an everlasting priesthood." When the Israelites invade and conquer neighboring lands, God instructs them to massacre all the captives, including women, so that they're not tempted to intermarry with them (Deuteronomy 7:2).

By the time of the New Testament, much of this had changed. Christians weren't all of one ethnicity, nor did they have their own country. They were scattered throughout the powerful, militaristic Roman Empire, governed by absolute rulers who were brutally intolerant of dissent. In light of this, it's little surprise that the New Testament teaches the virtue of submission to the authorities. It states unequivocally that earthly rulers, even when they act unjustly, are ordained to their position by God and that Christian believers should obey them without question -- in fact, it states that those who resist are in peril of eternal damnation (Romans 13:1-2).

All these ideas, so clearly advocated in the Bible, are utterly contrary to what this nation stands for. The idea of divine-right kingship is what our founders successfully rebelled against in bringing forth this country. America is a democracy where the people choose their leaders, a constitutional republic where the powers of those leaders are strictly defined and limited by law. America is a multicultural, multiethnic nation founded on the idea of welcoming immigrants, the homeless and tempest-tossed of every land. Submission to the established authorities, of course, isn't an American value: Americans have a long and colorful history of debate, protest, and civil disobedience, and the right to criticize our leaders is sanctified in the Constitution. And most of all, America is a secular nation with a separation of church and state. We have no official faith, no national church as many European countries still do.

But America's Constitution is more than just a secular document; it's literally godless. It doesn't claim that the ideas it contains were the product of divine revelation. It states that governing power comes from the will of the people, not the commands of a deity. It doesn't assert that God has specially blessed this nation or shown it special favor -- in fact, it never mentions God at all. And it mentions religion in only two places, both of them negative mentions: in Article VI, which forbids any religious test for public office, and in the First Amendment, which forbids Congress from passing any law respecting an establishment of religion.

If America's founders had meant to establish a Christian nation, this is where they would have said so. But they said no such thing. And this leads into a historical fact that the religious right would dearly love to forget: the godlessness of the Constitution was a point of major controversy in the debate over ratification. When it was drafted, the fact that it made no explicit mention of God or Christianity wasn't a minor oversight. It was a major, deliberate omission that was obvious to all. Religious language was omnipresent in other legal documents and charters of the day, including the ones that inspired the Constitution in the first place.

For example, the Constitution's precursor, the Articles of Confederation, explicitly gives God the credit for making the state legislatures agree to it: "...it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said articles of confederation and perpetual union."

Going back further, the 1620 Mayflower Compact, made by the Pilgrims just before their landing, begins, "In the name of God, amen" and describes the purpose of their voyage as "for the glory of God and advancements of the Christian faith."

Another foundational legal document, the 1689 English Bill of Rights, was based on the political thinking of John Locke and may have been part of the inspiration for our own Bill of Rights. This document calls the U.K. "this Protestant kingdom," states that "it hath pleased Almighty God to make [King William III] the glorious instrument of delivering this kingdom from popery" and declares that no Catholic will ever be allowed to hold the throne of the U.K.

And lastly, there's the document at the root of the Western legal system, the Magna Carta. Like the others, it's woven throughout with religious language: its preamble begins "Know that before God..." and states that it was created "to the honor of God" and "the exaltation of the holy church."

In the light of these documents, it's easy to see just how unique, unusual, even unprecedented the Constitution is. The United States of America was the first modern republic that was created on the foundation of reason, without seeking blessings from a god, without imploring divine assistance or invoking divine favor. And, as I said, this fact was not overlooked when the Constitution was being debated. Very much to the contrary, the religious right of the founding generation angrily attacked it, warning that ratifying this godless document as-is would spell doom for the nation.

For instance, at the Constitutional Convention, the delegate William Williams proposed that the Constitution's preamble be modified to read: "We the people of the United States in a firm belief of the being and perfection of the one living and true God, the creator and supreme Governor of the World, in His universal providence and the authority of His laws... do ordain, etc". A failed Virginia initiative attempted to change the wording of Article VI to say that "no other religious test shall ever be required than a belief in the one only true God, who is the rewarder of the good, and the punisher of the evil". The Maryland delegate Luther Martin observed "there were some members so unfashionable as to think that... it would be at least decent to hold out some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism."

However, the Constitution's defenders held firm, and all the attempts to Christianize it failed. And the religious right of the day bitterly lamented that failure. One anonymous anti-federalist wrote in a Boston newspaper that America was inviting the curse of 1 Samuel 15:23 - "Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee." In 1789, a group of Presbyterian elders wrote to George Washington to complain that the Constitution contained no reference to "the only true God and Jesus Christ, who he hath sent." In 1811, Rev. Samuel Austin claimed that the Constitution's "one capital defect" was that it was "entirely disconnected from Christianity." In 1812, Rev. Timothy Dwight, grandson of the infamous preacher Jonathan Edwards, lamented that America had "offended Providence" by forming a Constitution "without any acknowledgement of God; without any recognition of His mercies to us, as a people, of His government, or even of His existence."

What the religious right failed to achieve at the Constitutional Convention, they kept trying to do in the following decades. The National Reform Association, founded in 1863 by a group of clergy, proposed a constitutional amendment which would have changed the preamble to read, "We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, they repeatedly brought this proposal before presidents and congresses, getting turned down each time. As recently as 1954, the National Association of Evangelicals was still trying to amend the Constitution with language such as, "This nation divinely recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Savior and Ruler of Nations, through whom are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God."

Only within the last 50 or 60 years, now that they've finally accepted they have no realistic hope of changing it, has the religious right flip-flopped and started claiming that the Constitution meant to establish a Christian nation all along. This staggeringly dishonest, wholesale rewriting of history has become their stock in trade, to the point of having full-time propagandists who obscure historical fact and promote the Christian-nation myth. These falsehoods filter into the political mainstream, until we have absurdities like Rick Perry claiming that the United States, a secular and democratic republic, was based on the legal code of an ancient theocratic monarchy. We, as liberals and progressives, should know better than to accept this falsehood. We have every reason to speak out and uphold America's proud history as a secular republic founded on reason and governed by the democratic will.

John Bolton Admits All Of These Wars Are For Oil

Vanity Fair - Của 1%, do 1%, và vì 1%

Cái này nói THỰC TẾ 'dân chủ' Mỹ nhá, chứ không phải là LÝ THUYẾT nhá:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

INEQUALITY

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.

By Joseph E. Stiglitz Illustration by Stephen Doyle

THE FAT AND THE FURIOUS The top 1 percent may have the best houses, educations, and lifestyles, says the author, but “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”

It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.

Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The justification they came up with was called “marginal-productivity theory.” In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years—whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative—went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards “performance bonuses” that they felt compelled to change the name to “retention bonuses” (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.

Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which mostcitizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.

First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.

Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead.

None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes.

Economists are not sure how to fully explain the growing inequality in America. The ordinary dynamics of supply and demand have certainly played a role: laborsaving technologies have reduced the demand for many “good” middle-class, blue-collar jobs. Globalization has created a worldwide marketplace, pitting expensive unskilled workers in America against cheap unskilled workers overseas. Social changes have also played a role—for instance, the decline of unions, which once represented a third of American workers and now represent about 12 percent.

But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power—from John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws, especially during Republican administrations, has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself—one of its best investments ever. The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favorable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflicts of interest.

When you look at the sheer volume of wealth controlled by the top 1 percent in this country, it’s tempting to see our growing inequality as a quintessentially American achievement—we started way behind the pack, but now we’re doing inequality on a world-class level. And it looks as if we’ll be building on this achievement for years to come, because what made it possible is self-reinforcing. Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth. During the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s—a scandal whose dimensions, by today’s standards, seem almost quaint—the banker Charles Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread among a few key elected officials could actually buy influence. “I certainly hope so,” he replied. The Supreme Court, in its recent Citizens United case, has enshrined the right of corporations to buy government, by removing limitations on campaign spending. The personal and the political are today in perfect alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.

America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect—people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military—the reality is that the “all-volunteer” army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain. The rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich: they encourage competition among countries for business, which drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the “core” labor rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries forworkers. Governments would compete in providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage earners, good education, and a clean environment—things workers care about. But the top 1 percent don’t need to care.

Or, more accurately, they think they don’t. Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling. With youth unemployment in America at around 20 percent (and in some locations, and among some socio-demographic groups, at twice that); with one out of six Americans desiring a full-time job not able to get one; with one out of seven Americans on food stamps (and about the same number suffering from “food insecurity”)—given all this, there is ample evidence that something has blocked the vaunted “trickling down” from the top 1 percent to everyone else. All of this is having the predictable effect of creating alienation—voter turnout among those in their 20s in the last election stood at 21 percent, comparable to the unemployment rate.

In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses—will they be next? They are right to worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—controls the lion’s share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.

As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled places.

Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.