PLEDGE: Are you ready for revision?

Sometime between the day Dwight Eisenhower retired and 1980, the leadership of the Republican Party decided the only way to save the United States of America was to destroy our government. That such a decision had been made was explicitly stated by Ronald Reagan during his first Inaugural Address. Reagan made clear that the form of government established by our nation's founders represented what was wrong with America. He said, "Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem." Implicit in that statement is a declaration of war on our representative democracy.

Throughout the 1950s to the present we've heard a constant drumbeat that government needs to perform like a business. To achieve this dystopian dream, the right wing moved to make our government into a wholly-owned corporate subsidiary. Yes, by God, they would "privatize government." That will spell the end of "one man, one vote." The Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case made legal "one dollar, one vote."

What the military forces of Axis powers in World War II and the USSR in the Cold War could not accomplish, corporate forces may very well achieve. Abraham Lincoln said, "... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed."

I ask the reader the following question: Will you be happy pledging allegiance to Goldman-Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Exxon-Mobile and the other corporate giants of the military - industrial - financial complex? My fellow Americans, the ball is in your court.

J. ALBERT ROWE

Coeur d'Alene