The Oil Drum

So the right to assemble to petition for redress ensures that the wealthy remain powerful? Somehow, I missed that in reading the coverage of the various demonstrations over the last couple of months for those who feel the current politics concerning immigration is not something they can simply ignore.

What I will grant you is that most Americans (excepting those recent and illegal immigrants) are far too lazy to care about anything but their comforts, which are draining away anyways.

Personally, I find this money=power equation a touch too simplistic in any political system which allows for the change of government without revolution and blood in the streets. Unless you think FDR and his various approaches to government during the Great Depression were just another example of the rich retaining power (I may add, the rich of the time would not have agreed with you - it has taken them generations to roll back Roosevelt's reforms).  

But as we all know, the most dominant voting block in American is the non-voter. I am not sure what that has to do with 1st Amendment rights, but it is certainly a sign of the sort of decay that anyone looking at democracy as a political system considers to be one of the incurable weaknesses which eventually destroys democracy. The founders of America read a lot of history, and the fact that the system they constructed has lasted a couple of centuries is proof that they understood much about democracy's fatal flaws - no one else at the time expected more than a few years.

But America has always been about the rich having power - didn't you learn that in history in school? Maybe coming from Virginia, these things are handled more honestly than other places - none of the Virginian Founding Fathers were of modest means - and their taste in plantations remains heads and shoulders above everyone else's, in my humble opinion.