[kavabean]

I agree with the main thrust of your comment but perpetuating the 'immaculate conception' myth of the US as a government of, for, and by the people is counterproductive. In particular the war on drugs absolutely goes against the ideas 'espoused' at that time. But that still holds. Ask any senator what America stands for and they will say something like "liberty, freedom, and justice for all". That doesn't mean it is what they work for in the background.

Even while framing the constitution the controlling landowners of the US, i.e. the "US", were aware of the internal enemy that needed to be controlled.

"The framers of the constitution made the determination that America could not allow functioning democracy, since people would use their political power to attack the wealth of the minority of the opulent"

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19970303.htm

Where the "opulent" are the class from which the framers originated.

This is not a new development.

[NotAtWork]

> makes it very clear that the new constitutional system must be designed so as to insure that the government will, in his words "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority" and bar the way to anything like agrarian reform

My point wasn't that this didn't happen or the US was some magical egalitarian wonderland (though the foundational period of the US had a surprisingly level of wealth equality compared to some other periods).

Rather, my point was the manner in which they did this was to construct a system of law that protected the private individual from the instruments of government, and that we're slowly undoing that precise social contract - not stealing their wealth in exchange for restraint on government powers.

It's hard to argue even though the founding of the US wasn't perfect, and that these instruments largely came about as a protection for the wealthy, that it didn't significantly raise the profile of the citizen-as-having-rights-to-be-protected form of government or that the US doesn't have a long history of viewing such policies as important, even if there have been historic violations.

I think you'd even have trouble finding periods similar to the 50-70 year long ratcheting we've seen meant to undermine those exact same rights, or that their infringement has crept so far up the social ladder.

[kavabean]

OK. Yes the framers of the constitution did create protections from the government for themselves, and shared that with the rest of the population. As you imply it is hard to know if the general case was a side-effect or original intent.

At the same time they purposefully sought to disenfranchise the majority so that they might change the rules at any time.

So the constitution within the constitution is that the government will protect the wealthy, and that makes sense given who was writing it.

It appears that the ruling elites now value control of the population over privacy. I see two possible explanations but perhaps there are others.

* They see the incredible growth of poverty in the US and there is no vast neighboring region in which to exterminate existing inhabitants and settle. Hence wealth protection from the masses is a higher priority than the privacy protections.

* Mass media has distorted the scale of the disenfranchising effects of our system (rich have more control and poor even less) and the wealthy realise they can use their control of the government to make huge fortunes. For example the profits of the banks are derived by transfer of wealth from taxpayers through implicit insurance since insurance allows highly profitable high risk strategies. They then choose short term profits over privacy / human rights.

In any case they choose to exercise their rights under the constitution within the constitution to change the laws to bring about repression and control.

I'm not really rebutting your point here. Instead I want to highlight that what is happening now IS consistent with the ideals of governance around during the formation of the US and what has changed is likely a lower level 'priority'

[dannypgh]

"though the foundational period of the US had a surprisingly level of wealth equality compared to some other periods"

You must be excluding both the African slaves and indigenous American population from your analysis.