At some point in recent years, we started looking at corporate America as the most important component in our democracy and our lives. I suspect it happened after the end of the Cold War, because it certainly wasn’t our perception during those years when our country was engaged in an “arms race” with the Soviet Union. Back in those days, we clearly understood that corporate freedom wasn’t free: We knew that our democratic, free market system, which allowed everyone the freedom of starting businesses with little or no money and growing them into billion-dollar corporations, was only possible because fellow Americans were fighting on the battlefields to protect this freedom. And we also knew that they were paying tremendous prices in doing so; it was costing them their limbs, their lives, their livelihood, their marriages, their will to live, their mental health ... It was costing them everything.
Most importantly, however, all of us were aware that the highest numbers of casualties were Americans, from the non-corporate world. Blue collar, middle class and working class Americans were the ones in combat and caskets on the battlefields around the world.
Today, however, the sacrifices of these groups of Americans are less visible, less supported, less rewarded, and less acknowledged. Instead, it is corporate America that is getting the credit for the wonderful freedom and democracy we have.
Personally, I wish it were possible to start a draft. I wish every corporate executive and every politician were forced to serve in the United States Army or the United States Marines. I wish I could give them a one-year tour in a combat zone with a combat unit. Maybe then they will begin to understand that although they started businesses and worked very hard to make them into the billion-dollar corporations they are today, there are hundred of thousands of men and women who gave their lives so that American corporations can exist.
Asking American corporations to pay more taxes, so that middle class and working class families can have medical care, jobs, places to live, and decent schools for the children, is simply requesting that corporations help to protect those who are protecting them. It is literally a signs of gratitude!
By
James A. Porter
