Gary Hart is a former United States senator
Welcome to the age of vanity politics and campaigns-for-hire. What would our founders make of this nightmare?
Four qualities have distinguished republican government from ancient Athens forward:the sovereignty of the people; a sense of the common good; government dedicated to the commonwealth; and resistance to corruption. Measured against the standards established for republics from ancient times, the American Republic is massively corrupt.
From Plato and Aristotle forward, corruption was meant to describe actions and decisions that put a narrow, special, or personal interest ahead of the interest of the public or commonwealth. Corruption did not have to stoop to money under the table, vote buying, or even renting out the Lincoln bedroom. In the governing of a republic, corruption was self-interest placed above the interest of all—the public interest.
By that standard, can anyone seriously doubt that our republic, our government, is corrupt?
More @ Time
The last hurrah of an all but forgotten, irrelevant political hack. Sorry Gary but where was this perspective and eloquence 30 years ago when you and your party was blaming Ronald Reagan for the destruction of the republic, fear mongering over his standing up to the Russians and throwing every possible dollar into expanding the welfare state? Your not a day late and a dollar short, more like 30 years and 15 Trillion dollars short.
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