Speaking
Monday at The Brookings Institution, Bernie recounted a weekend trip to the
Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. “While there, we read
Lincoln’s extraordinary Gettysburg Address – where he spoke of his hope that
this nation would have a ‘new birth of freedom—and that government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ As we
drove home it struck me hard that Lincoln’s beautiful vision – a government of
the people, by the people, for the people – was, in fact, perishing, was coming
to an end, and that we are moving rapidly away from our democratic heritage into
an oligarchic form of society – where we are experiencing a government of the
billionaire class, by the billionaire class and for the billionaire class.”
American democracy is in peril, Bernie explained, because the Supreme Court
opened the floodgates and let billionaires spend unlimited sums to buy
elections. The Koch brothers alone are planning a nearly $1 billion campaign in
2016, a bigger budget than either of the major political parties. |
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