Party trumps country

When the founding fathers put in the first amendment they did so because they feared the power of the central government. They had just gone through a revolution to get out from under the king and wanted to make sure that would not happen again. The free press was the instrument to be used to reign in the federal government, to limit its power and to shine the light of day on all of its activities. This was the intended safe guard and so I pose the question, how did the todays government get all of its power? I maintain it started with a journalist named Dunne who in the early 1900’s wrote that the purpose of the journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. It was this attitude among writers that moved the emphasis from watching government to watching others. Soon the idea of protecting people from the misuse of power by government shifted to protecting people from powerful people not in government. Big business and by inference people who made lots of money from big business had to be exposed. Excess profits became and evil phrase. Fast forward to today and the whole concept has taken on political tones. Liberals often castigate large profitable business as somehow taking advantage of the ordinary citizen. During my life time I remember when AT&T was the big enemy and then it was McDonalds and then Microsoft and Walmart and big oil. On the other hand when it is Fanny Mae handing out loans to people who are not qualified to repay them the liberals back them by passing laws to make it easier to get loans. Using the cry that everyone has the right to the American Dream of home ownership they pushed the mortgage market to the point of collapse and the good citizens who were supposed to be helped ended up paying the bill for their misadventure. Conservatives seem to think the government regulators are only out to limit the growth of big companies and believe the free market will always act in the best interest of the public and they pass laws to encourage deregulation. What is wrong headed here is that the process has become politicized and this blinds both sides. The battle is no longer what is best for the people but what is best for the party.