Are we a Victim of our History?

"Well, that's the way it's always been done!" I'm not against tradition, but if we aren't careful, we can ignore our history or worse "deify" it and make it into a sacred cow which eventually sends us to hell. We do this in the U.S. by citing the founding fathers and their wisdom to justify the status quot. My current thoughts are on Capitalism. In the U.S., one is accused of being a socialist, communist, or a fascist, and definitely unAmerican, if you say anything negative about Capitalism. The thing is, the founding fathers were progressives. They didn't get bogged down by tradition. Ben Franklin, didn't start out as a revolutionary, but became one when he saw that it was necessary in order to move forward. We should not hold onto the past at the expense of the future. Capitalism started when our economy was quite different than it is today. We did not need the level of restrictions we need today to keep it stable and to keep people in check. One builds a 2 story house very differently from how one builds a 100 story skyscraper. Franklin's formation of the paid night watch in Philadelphia, along with the public library, and community fire department, showed that he was not a victim of history. but a person who created the necessary structures to fit the time.

In the U.S. today, we need to vigorously regulate the financial sector, in order to keep it from sinking the overall economy. When the top 1% make as much as the bottom 95%, the economy can easily topple from being so top-heavy. Additionally, we have historical precedents for the need for regulations, i.e. anti-trust laws, child labor laws, banking regulations, which were all put into place because capitalism was becoming abusive. Unfortunately, we are like an abused woman who can't leave her abusive lover for fear of the unknown. We keep giving Capitalism another chance to hurt us. No, I say! Without the proper boundaries, and I believe some major cognitive therapy, capitalists will continue to abuse. Now is the time for us to all rally and just say 'NO" to further abuse! O.K. that was more Patrick Henry than Ben Franklin, but I hope you get the point.