Have we reached the point where corporatism is triumphing over democracy?

America is recovering from an economic crisis, and Russia and China seem hell-bent on pushing us into what may become a world war. We've been here

three times before in the history of our country and each one has heralded major

changes in the nature and structure of our government. As we watch corporations pour increasingly large amounts

of money into politics, it's a good time to re-evaluate their role in governance and society.

At the top of that list, as a doctrine created on a whole cloth by the US Supreme Court in the late 19th century called corporate personhood.

It has become one of the most destructive forces in American politics.

In 1776, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was published and the U.S. Declaration of Independence

was signed.

This was no coincidence. Both were broadly embraced reactions in part to a

widespread economic depression that had begun in the previous decade. England reacted to

their economic distress with a series of efforts to raise revenue,

the Stamp Act, the Townsend Acts, and the Tea Act, among others.

The colonists reacted by defying the corporate power of the East India Company with the Boston Tea Party in the Declaration of Independence.

There was war and upheaval and a new nation was born.

Four score, 80 years later, Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer in private practice working for the railroads.

On August 12, 1857, he was paid $4,800 in a check which he deposited and then converted

a cash on August 31st.

I was fortunate for Lincoln because just over a month later in the great panic of October

1857, both the bank and the railroad were forced to suspend payment.

Of the 66 banks in Illinois, the Illinois Central Gazette in Champaign reported that by the following

April 27th, by the following April 27 of them had gone into liquidation.

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