[Peace-discuss] life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and George Bush's America

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

Published on Monday, July 5, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
The Broken Promise of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of 
Happiness
by Karen Dolan and Stefan Heumann
 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, 
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these 
rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their 
just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever 
any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it 
is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to 
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such 
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them 
shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness”
-- Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

July 4 is dedicated to the memory of the Declaration of 
Independence which called for the end of English colonial 
rule and formed the basis for the emergence of the first 
modern democracy. Over two hundred years later we still 
celebrate this courageous expression of democratic 
principles. But the Declaration of Independence is not only 
about the will to self-governance. The authors of the 
declaration justified their dissociation from English rule 
with the failure of the English Crown to secure their basic 
and unalienable rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of 
Happiness.”

The Declaration of Independence reminds us that the 
government has to be at the service of its people and that 
the failure of the government to serve the people gives them 
the right to institute a new government. On July 4 we should 
not only celebrate the achievements of this country, but we 
should also ask ourselves how well our current government 
serves us. What is the state of American democracy in 2004?

At least two recent publications indicate that the American 
government does not serve its people as it should. Earlier 
this month, a task force of the American Political Science 
Association, the nation’s most respected professional 
association of political scientists, published a revealing 
report on the failings of U.S. democracy.

The report, “American Democracy in an Age of Rising 
Inequality,” finds that increasing inequalities threaten the 
American ideal of equal citizenship and that progress toward 
real democracy may have stalled in this country and even 
reversed.

This study reported that income inequalities have sharply 
risen since the mid-1970s and threaten the health of our 
democracy. Nearly nine out of ten individuals in families 
with incomes over $75, 000 reported voting in the 
presidential elections while only half of those in families 
with incomes under $15,000 cast their vote. Only 12% of 
American households had incomes over $100,000 in 2000, but a 
whopping 95% of the donors who made substantial contributions 
were in these wealthiest households.

The concentration of wealth an income in the hands of a few 
has given the affluent a means to express their voice in 
politics that is unavailable to most citizens. Bush’s tax 
cuts, overwhelmingly benefiting the wealthiest Americans, 
demonstrate that our governing institutions are much more 
responsive to the highly privileged than to ordinary 
Americans.

Also telling is a new compilation of statistics from 
Washington University professor Mark Rank shows the shocking 
level of persistent poverty in America. In addition to 
pointing out that the U.S. has the highest poverty rate of 
all industrialized nations, Rank argues that the economic 
deprivation wrought by such conditions puts disproportionate 
obstacles to liberty, justice, equality and democracy in the 
path of the poor and disadvantaged in this country.

Rank’s recent book, “One Nation Underprivileged: Why American 
Poverty Affects us All,” demonstrates how poverty has become 
an integral part of our everyday experiences. We not only see 
evidence of poverty round us, but according to Rank at the 
age of 75, three-quarters of the American population will 
have experienced at least on year of poverty during their 
adulthood. Rank persuasively argues for setting of the 
poverty level at the level needed for basic self-suffiency, 
and estimates this at one and a half times the official 
poverty level.

U.S. labor market statistics indicate that many full-time 
jobs do not pay people enough to lift them out of poverty. 
Almost 10% of all families in which the head of household 
works full-time live below the official poverty line. Twenty-
nine percent of large families (Two parents and three 
children or more) fall below the official poverty line. If 
poverty is looked at in the more accurate way to reflect what 
is needed for self-sufficiency, fully 54.6% of large families 
in the U.S. whose head of household works full time, live in 
poverty.

A final blow to the illusion of U.S. ideals of freedom and 
democracy is evidenced in the racial wealth gap. The APSA 
study found that the median U.S. white household has 62% more 
income and twelve times as much wealth as the median black 
household and that 61% of African-Americans in this country 
and half of all Latinos have no financial assets at all, 
compared to only 25% of whites without financial assets. 
These racial disparities are more extreme than those in 
Canada, Germany, France and many other industrialized 
countries and are a significant barrier to equality and 
responsive government.

So, this 4th of July let’s raise our glasses to our 
independence. Let’s also consider this question: Is it time 
for the People to “institute a new government?”

Karen Dolan, kdolan at igc.org, is a Fellow at the Institute for 
Policy Studies. Stefan Heumann, Stefan at ips-dc.org is a 
researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies. Institute for 
Policy studies is a multi-issue think tank in Washington D.C. 
__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-328-4064
homepage: http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~ppatton/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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