May 7
GUEST: Larry Wittner, political activist, author, and prominent American historian, talks about how wealth inequality and militarism make a country's citizens less happy and less willing to work together for the common good.World’s major military and economic powers lack happiness
Larry Wittner taught at Vassar College in the late 1960s and has been active in peace and justice campaigns ever since.
I have always wondered about the "pursuit of happiness" phrase in the Declaration of Independence. Was it thrown in to round out the more important rights that all of a country's citizens should be granted? And what if a state does things that make the majority unhappy? Is that a valid grievance changing our form of government?
I feel that a large majority of our country is not happy with our government's distribution of wealth. Close to 90% of US citizens have wanted to tax the very wealthy more, and that polling result has remained remarkably consistent over the last two decades. Is it an indictment of our form of government that the will of the majority is so consistently denied? And denied simply because the very rich have bribed most of our "elected" leaders in both parties?
Time to read that declaration again. What are the rights of citizens when their pursuit of happiness is denied by the kleptocracy that has come to be our form of government?
