Within the last two weeks my newspaper contained two articles which stopped me cold.

The first had a caption which declared, "Greed is an enormous force for good." What?

A brief of the article goes like this "...I'm talking about people trying to get as much as they can for themselves...Free market capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to the rise of capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving one's fellow man. .." What?

Capitalism equates with serving one's fellow man? Who's kidding whom? History denies this claim.

If wealthy and influentially powerful individuals and families throughout most of history hadn't selfishly claimed land as their "private" possessions, forbidden to be used by anyone else, for any reason, and enforced by their laws, would as many people of the past—as did—have suffered impoverishment and died of starvation? Would there have developed more than the two economic classes of the very rich and the very poor, as has existed throughout most of humanity's time on Earth?

If the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1786 and their wealthy sponsors hadn't been as concerned about their wealth, their wealth-making opportunities, and their lavish, undeserved lifestyles, and had really wanted to bestow a democracy—a true democracy—upon the new republic wouldn't they have created something like the Town Meetings of New England, in which all citizens have a voice in selecting the values and laws of the republic and not the pseudo-democratic "representative" democracy, as they did?

If wealthy and moderately wealthy employers of the new republic hadn't been as concerned about their wealth, their wealth-making opportunities and their lavish lifestyles throughout most of the past 225 years, would they have—as constantly as they have—under valued and underpaid American workers, causing the economic and emotional strains and stresses that have destroyed so many working families?

The second article astounded me even more than the first. Its headline was, "Workers of the world, unite!," and its very first paragraph read, "The Republican Party is the party of the white working class. This group—whites with high school degrees and maybe some college—is still the largest block in the electorate. They overwhelmingly favor Republicans."What? History also denies this claim.

The current Republican Party evolved from the Whig Party, which evolved from Hamilton's Federalist Party. History claims all three political parties were, undeniably, the representatives of the wealthy class and not of working Americans. Anyone with even a slight knowledge of the republic's immediate past knows the Republican Party has always been the spokesmen of wealthy Americans.

And American workers—white or colored—favoring the Republicans. Wow! What a stretch of the imagination. But wait! What if this last claim is true, or partially true? After the Civil War and until the 20th century, we know black Americans did favor the Republican Party that presumably gave them their freedom. But what if current generations of Americans workers with, at least, some education actually do believe in capitalism and do favor and vote Republican? It's not impossible. Stranger things have happened

However, only an ignorance of American history and a lack of understanding the one-sided war waged by the wealthy against the workers of the republic for the past 225 years would allow such a reality. And only an ignorance of the traditional definition of poverty would allow such improbable things to become reality.

For most of the past five centuries, poverty was defined as: "the condition of not owning income-producing property; the inability of an estate to produce an income large enough to pay for the necessities of life and still have some left over for regular savings." Read this definition of poverty again, for it has not changed, it’s as valid today as during the past centuries.

It means, If you are merely an employee, having a job doesn’t remove you from the ranks of the impoverished. As an office or factory worker without income-producing property, with little savings, and wholly dependent upon current income—wage or salary—to survive, traditionally, you are considered “poor.”

It means if you go to an office or a regular location every day at regular hours to earn a day’s wages upon which you depend to survive, rationalization can’t alter the truth that outside forces can abruptly, and arbitrarily, stop your income. It simply means you are considered to be “poor” and no amount of rationalization can change this truth.

The two questions working Americans must ask of themselves are: "If all American workers understood this definition, and knew the true history of the United States republic, why would any of them take pride in being Republican—servant of the wealthy?" and “How can these people be alerted to such truths?”

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