The coming election will be an opportunity for voters to choose a candidate who believes in the principals of democracy. The choice is between a government in which political power is exercised by all the people or the elite few, a plutocracy, whereby power is exercised by the wealthy. 

Never has this difference been so obvious as in the current Senate race between multi-millionaire representative Steve Daines and the honest hardworking school teacher and state representative Amanda Curtis.   

Former presidents of both political parties have recognized the difference between democracy and plutocracy, and their observations are worthy of note; 

Thomas Jefferson said, “those seeking profits, were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government.”  

Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a speech on June 27,1936, said, “These economic royalists, complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the overprivileged alike.”  

Dwight D. Eisenhower complained about the rich far-right Republicans trying to tell him what he should do and called himself a “modern Republican.” He kept tax rates on corporations and the rich high, approved the largest public-works project in American history (the Interstate Highway System), signed bills making Social Security nearly universal, and raised the minimum wage by 33 percent. He established the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and warned against the power of the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell address.

When Harry Truman was dealing with a do-nothing Congress, like we have today, he said it best when a reporter asked him why he was giving the Republicans “hell.” He answered, “I am just telling the truth and they think it’s hell.”

The plutocracy, together with the media, have convinced working people to support cutting taxes on the wealthy, deregulate and privatize the commons in the name of “free markets.” And like the game of Monopoly, wealth will accumulate in a few hands and will be the ruin of the democracy that Abraham Lincoln referred to in his Gettysburg address as government of the people, by the people and for the people.

The first three words of the Constitution are “We the people.” We need to harness the power of democratic government and make America freer, more equal and more democratic than ever before.

Democracy or plutocracy? You decide. —Rodrik Brosten, Bigfork