Thom Hartmann on why we should use constitutional solutions to rescue our democracy from the agendas of billionaires and corporations.
This excerpt by Thom Hartmann was published in Yes! magazine on November 1st, 2019.
There were those among the founders and framers of the Constitution who didn’t mean for the Court to have as much power as it does today—Thomas Jefferson among them. My new book The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America dives into the philosophies that guided the men who drafted the Constitution. It also shows how in 1803, the Supreme Court set itself above Congress and the president with the power to review, strike down, or rewrite laws based on its own lone interpretation of the Constitution.
Importantly, the framers of the Constitution gave no consideration to “the rights of nature” or even of the environment, other than its sheer productive potential to enhance the wealth of the nation. When the Constitution was written in the summer and fall of 1787, the new thing in political circles was the idea of property rights for commoners, which had only clearly been articulated outside of the realm of royal prerogatives during the previous few centuries.
John Locke wrote in his 1689 Two Treatises of Government that the main purpose of government was to make sure that “No-one may take away or damage anything that contributes to the preservation of someone else’s life, liberty, health, limb, or goods.” He was speaking directly to the new ability of some commoners to actually claim title to things, including their own bodies.
(To read the rest of this excerpt please click HERE.)