You are digging deeper, my friend! Probably a lot deeper than most people want to go now. That’s the challenge I am finding, Fred-Rick. People are only willing to accept a certain amount of “tweaking” to their world view. Baby steps, I suppose.

I agree that both parties have a role to play: the GOP keeps us hot and bothered about war and terrorism, thereby justifying the need to maintain an imperialist military industrial complex, and the Democrats ensure that government keeps growing and making Americans more dependent on it at every level. But both parties are dedicated to gutting our civil liberties.

I’m not entirely convinced, however, that the U.S. was an oligarchy at its inception. James Madison and other Founding Fathers were acutely aware of the risk of oligarchy and crafted the Constitution to forestall the threat as long as possible. But I do agree that the forces of oligarchy took hold very early in this country’s history. We were a “free” country only…momentarily.