The Road So Far
Austin, Texas, Saturday, June 12, 1999
(Guest speaker at a Reform Party state meeting.)
Greetings to all of you.
I would like to tell you about the people I have met on the road so far, and what they have said to me.
The leaders in Congress say that the people don't care much about campaign finance reform. Their pollsters might be asking the question the wrong way. I find that people are very worried about how big business special interest groups have bought and sold our elections and our representatives.
I find that people are angry about the fact that their democracy is drowning in a flood of money, and angry that they no longer have representation.
The people I have met on the road so far do indeed want to have representatives who are sensitive to their needs, and they want their own votes to matter on election day. They long for a democracy where each person has an equal voice, and the government is the joint action of common people. They hate the idea that big money has purchased their democracy out from under them.
My, God, yes. People care and care deeply about the distortion and poisoning of our democracy by big business money. They may despair of a solution, just as a family may at some point despair of ever getting rid of a house guest who has stayed on since, well, 1978. But they deeply care and they will spring into action when an opening presents itself to escort this rude and selfish beast to the bus station.
Our democracy, it is said, is not something we have, but something we do. And right now, we cannot do it because we cannot speak. We are shouted down by the bullhorns of big money. It is money with no manners for democracy. It is too loud and too ready to lie for its purposes. It is a newcomer, having been given its voice by a 1978 Supreme Court decision (Boston v. Bellotti) allowing business corporations to get involved in politics, and it has not proven itself worthy of that court's expectations. It is time for the court to reverse that decision.
Business corporations are not people. They are protective associations that we, the people, allow to be chartered for business purposes on the condition that they will behave. They are not behaving, and we must look to whether we can still afford, as a people and as a planet, to give these monstrosities a birth certificate but no proper upbringing, no set of expectations, no consequences for boorish and selfish behavior. We are simply tired of the damage they do and we are tired of cleaning up after them. If they are to be allowed to exist, they must agree to be responsible for their own activities, start to finish, without requiring public dollars to be used to clean their rooms up after them. The era of corporate irresponsibility must be put to an end immediately, particularly in regard to the degradation of our political and natural environments, while we still have the power to act. Parents know that there comes a time when infantile behavior persists, but the child is too large to do much with. We Americans still can act in regard to the corporations we have given birth to, but not by much of an advantage. Our advantage will evaporate early in the 21st Century if we do not act soon.
I wish Teddy Roosevelt would come back and lead us in this. I think I know what the great Republican would say about these dangerously overlarge monsters and I think I know what he would say about their trained monkeys in Congress. First, he would say, and I say this now for him for I am closer to his generation than most of you: Yes, please, do plaster-up the holes that have been scratched in the wall we built in 1907. Pass Shays-Meehan in the House, McCain-Feingold in the Senate as a down payment on the job of removing corporate money from politics, then work to restore public ownership of the airwaves so we can afford to talk to one another again, and pass laws to limit the size and increase the responsibilities of corporations.
They indeed threaten our democracy now at every turn. If they get any larger, any more concentrated, how is that different from the economic and political totalitarianism that we thought we defeated with the fall of communism?
Does it matter if it is Rupert Murdoch or Michael Eisner, instead of Marshall Tito or Nikita Khrushchev, who owns everything and decides everything for us, even if, through the stock exchange, we all have a powerless piece of this new, mass collective? The soul of democracy is diversity, not concentration. Diversity requires the human scale, not monstrous scale.
If Teddy Roosevelt were here, I believe there would be hell to pay come next election. But we don't need him for that. We know how to sweep clean our temple of Democracy when we need to from time to time. And we must do it again now, finding candidates who will pass these needed reforms so that we might have, again, a government of the people.
On the road so far, I have met Americans who deeply love the idea of America. It is an image they carry in their hearts. It is a dream they are willing to sacrifice their lives for. Many of them do. There is no separating this image of democracy from people's longing for personal freedom for themselves, their family, their friends. To the extent that our government is not our own, we are not free people. We feel a heavy oppression in our lives because we have lost hold of this thing, this self-governance, that is rightfully ours because it is our dream and our history.
On the road so far, people bless me with their hopes for America. They are not bitter, but they are discouraged. They are Americans, so they are relentless in their determination to be the free citizens of a beautiful democracy.
Shame on those in Congress who stand in the way of this longing. Shame on those who take, take, take special interest money and refuse to uphold the laws we put in place in 1907 to sweep big business greed out of our way so we may conduct the very serious business of a democracy without their selfish interference.
Teddy Roosevelt said this in Kansas on Aug. 31, 1910:
"Our government, national and state, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks today...The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being. There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done."
Mr. Roosevelt was right. And we must end the American Century he opened with a completion of his unfinished business. He was right, it is hard. It takes a long time. It is a long road we must walk to get our democracy back and to make it a servant of our own needs and values and of our aspirations for our children. We must continue on this long road until we succeed.
Any Member of Congress who stands to make a speech in agreement with all this but who does not do everything possible to get the Shays-Meehan bill passed in the House and the McCain-Feingold bill passed in the Senate is hardly worth listening to, definitely not worth voting for, and is as dangerous as any of the several rattlesnakes I have nearly stepped on along the road so far.
Let these cold-blooded, Congressional reptiles take, take, take special interest money and continue to tell us why money is speech, and why the wealthy corporations have the right to shout us down with the money they steal from us. We see through them and their ridiculous and insulting argument that the Constitution gives anyone the right to shout us down and drown our voices with their power.
On the road so far, I have met people who know what this country is all about and who would not subvert it for their own greedy convenience. They have taken me into their homes and fed me at their tables and shown me the children for whom they sacrifice their lives and for whom they pray for a free and gentle democracy. And I will tell you that I am with them. I am with their dream and I know you are, too. We are all on this road and we must stay on it together. We must end our American Century with the optimism and clear purpose and high ideals with which it began. Only then can the next century be ours, as well.
Yes, it is a long road. But what nation, what people can look at their history with such pride as can we? Who thinks they can stand in the way of our need to be free, to manage our own government, to be a force for good in the world, to protect our children and our land, to sweep away before us anyone who tries to turn our sacred institutions of civic freedom to their greedy purposes?
On the road so far, I have seen a great nation. I have felt it hugging my shoulders, shaking my hand, cheering from across the way. I am so in love with it.
I know you are too. Thank you. I will see you on our road.