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" "Locke is the man whom Thomas Jefferson plagiarized, or was inspired by, when he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that the purpose of... government was to provide for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"... [H]e replaced Locke's repeated and varied mentions of different types of property with "happiness." It was the first time that word ever appeared in the founding documents of any nation.
Thom Hartmann (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio personality, author of over 2 dozen books, a former psychotherapist, and progressive political commentator. Hartmann has hosted a nationally syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, since 2003.
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Fascists have an agenda that is primarily economic. As the Free Dictionary notes, fascism/corporatism is “an attempt to create a 'modern' version of feudalism by merging the 'corporate' interests with those of the state.” Feudalism, of course, is one of the most stable of the three historic tyrannies (kingdoms, theocracies, feudalism) that Thomas Jefferson identified as the ones that ruled nations prior to the rise of American republican democracy, and can be roughly defined as “rule by the rich.”
American constitutional law is, in many ways, grounded in British common law... [where] there are two types of "persons": "natural persons," like you and me, and "artificial persons," which include governments, churches (and other nonprofits), and for-profit corporations... necessary so that the law (and taxes) could reach them. ...Knowing this, most laws having to do with just human beings used the phrase "natural persons"... The Fourteenth Amendment, however, does not draw any distinction... and twenty years later, corporate lawyers would seize upon that... [S]uch sweeping ramifications never occurred to Thaddeus Stevens or his colleagues who drafted the... Amendment. ...But fate and time and the conspiracies of great wealth and power often have a way of turning common sense and logic on its head...