Why Are Brits Rioting and Not Americans? It's the Social Contract, Stupid!

Our Social Contract Dates to Constitutional Amendments After the Civil War

August 10, 2011
By: Dave Rogers

A host of questions arise in the wake of youth rioting in Britain and monumental political disagreements in the U.S.

Visitors from Britain comment that they can sense a vastly different atmosphere when they deplane in the U.S. It's positive here, negative in Britain. Why?

We agreed on a social contract after the Civil War that still basically serves us well. Amendments to the Constitution restored the original intent of equality that had been subverted.

Why the Civil War? The same underlying reasons we now face -- power and money. Who controls and who prospers. All regimes in history, all attempts of man to form lasting societies, rise and fall on those basic aspects.

Universal equality, voting rights, due process and equal justice -- those were the foundation stones of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

We know from our experiences in the 1930s that the American system, based on the Bill of Rights and the amended Constitution, is superior to any the world has seen. It can withstand the type of tectonic economic shifts now going on.

But, at the same time, the system is fragile, as we have seen in the 1960s with rioting that burned many major cities -- especially Detroit.

Each time the system totters, it is because large segments of the population feel the social contract that binds us as a nation has been broken, or at least severely threatened.

Middle Eastern countries, one by one, are facing uprisings of the common people. The power of the sheiks, as well as monarchs of all species, is under serious challenge by those who feel disenfranchised.

Don't think it cannot happen here: it surely can!

If we as a freedom-loving democratic nation break our social contract with a mass of our population (mainly the poor and jobless) we risk the same unrest now sweeping the world.

Global economic shifts are placing this nation, as well as other so-called "industrialized" countries, at risk of social unrest that can wreck structures carefully built over decades of cooperation.

The fact that we have placed a non-white at the head of our government was an act of desperation, in some viewpoints. We had no where else to turn, having been betrayed by the financial masterminds who took away jobs and homes for their own profit. And placed young people in uniform in harm's way for specious reasons.

We recall the campaign of 2008 when the wealthy and middle class decided to turn to Mr. Obama because their fortunes and way of life were at risk. How quickly we forget those perilous days and the reasons for unprecedented voter opinions.

And, how quickly the minions of greed can reassert themselves. The Wisconsin battles funded by the ultra wealthy Koch brothers are a case in point. Thankfully, we have a moderate governor here in Michigan who obviously realizes the danger in threatening the social contract.

This is a middle class, working person's country, and we must never forget that and must never allow the rich and powerful selfish interests to dominate overwhelmingly.

Remember Ike and his prophetic warning about the threat to the nation posed by the "military industrial complex"? Isn't that exactly what we are seeing now?

We fought one of the most terrible civil wars in world history over this very issue, an easy fact to forget in face of romanticized history of blue and gray military paragons.

The causes of the war are obscured by cannon and musket smoke. The Civil War is the ultimate model of the unceasing tug of war between democracy and aristocracy.

Those who felt repression of humanity, of any color, was the proper right of the powerful, had seized control of what was supposed to be a representative government. How did that happen? By allocating members of Congress according to the population of those who could not vote. That allowed the South to dominate national affairs for nearly a century.

Yes, we are still fighting the Civil War.

Now we must recall our history and return to the principles of equitable cooperation that arose in the wake of the Civil War. Those are the principles that made our nation great for the past 150 years and will serve us all equally well again.

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