It's funny how well you can find out an answer to a question by using the web. I was doing some research into Republic's when I ran into a word that I had not heard before; Oligarchy.



Oligarchy (Greek Ὀλιγαρχία, Oligarkhía) is a form of government where political power effectively rests with a small elite segment of society distinguished by royalty, wealth, family, military powers or occult spiritual hegemony. The word oligarchy is from the Greek words for "few" (ὀλίγος olígos) and "rule" (ἀρχή arkhē). Such states are often controlled by politically powerful families whose children were heavily conditioned and mentored to be heirs of the power of the oligarchy.

The concept of an "oligarchic democracy" is one which some scholars attribute to Ancient Rome and the United States. Marxist Ellen Meiksins Wood writes, that it "conveys a truth about U.S. politics every bit as telling as its application to ancient Rome. It is no accident that the Founding Fathers of the U.S. Republic looked to Roman models for inspiration in making the Federalist case, adopting Roman names as pseudonyms and conceiving of themselves as latterday Catos, forming a natural aristocracy of republican virtue. (Americans today still have a representative body called the Senate, and their republic is still watched over by the Roman eagle.) Faced with the distasteful specter of democracy, they sought ways to redefine that unpalatable concept to accommodate aristocratic rule, producing a hybrid, "representative democracy," which was clearly meant to achieve an effect similar to the ancient Roman idea of the "mixed constitution," in fact, an "oligarchic 'democracy."'[1] However, the constitution and state laws have since been modified, with the removal of the original property requirements for voting, as well as giving the vote to women and blacks.[2]


So that is how the US of A started, and now to where we are:


A number of critics argue that the United States political system is, itself, an oligarchic structure. Third party candidates stand little chance of election to national office, due to the enormous monetary capital needed to purchase advertising time and to make other key connections in order to gain sufficient attention from the electorate. Since large donors fuel national political races, expecting due compensation in return for funding the winners' campaigns, it is difficult to distinguish between the current situation and societies most commonly recognized as oligarchies. It is, many feel, a return to aristocratic rule, in which the common people have little control over their political fate; feelings of being "sold out" frequently lead to apathy, now recognized as the most common problem in American politics.


And now I wait to start seeing more signs of our slipping into a Solcialistic state.



JR14 out