Larry Flynt, known to many Americans as an outspoken, fearless champion of the First Amendment, and pornography entrepreneur as the publisher of Hustler Magazine and various other enterprises, is speaking up about his belief that the American government has "...been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich" in an item he wrote for the Huffington Post, titled "Common Sense 2009".

While there are likely plenty of people who would disdain Flynt for the reputation he developed and the methods that he employed to amass his personal wealth. Many people who would consider him morally corrupt for his role in bringing extreme pornographic images to newsstands and screens, or as an uneducated, crass, obscenity shouting miscreant (once having been ordered arrested by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court for contempt). Flynt does have some admirable attributes.

Some of Flynt's attributes are that he has never been afraid of hard work. While his career choices may be at odds with many people, and at times walking a thin line between being legal or not so legal, they all involved his laboring long and hard. He came from humble beginnings, from a family that he has termed destitute in rural Kentucky, he is someone, despite building a business empire that grosses hundreds of millions of dollars per year, who has never forgotten his beginnings, and who has been engaged in challenging "the system" his entire adult life. He has won some and lost some, in business, and in court, but possibly his strongest personal attribute is that he despises hypocrites.

While Larry Flynt may not be someone who's total package an average American might ever embrace whole heartily, he is someone who should garner our respect and attention, to at least listen to, and consider for his views on the hypocrisy of the plutocracy and how they would suck the last breath out of all of us common folk, as they grasp at every opportunity to build their own, selfish, treasure chests:

In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment's hesitation, they took our money -- yours and mine -- to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don't care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger refers to us as "useless eaters."

...The reason Wall Street was able to game the system the way it did -- knowing that they would become rich at the expense of the American people (oh, yes, they most certainly knew that) -- was because the financial elite had bribed our legislators to roll back the protections enacted after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Congress gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial lending banks from investment banks, and passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed for self-regulation with no oversight. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently revised its rules to allow for even less oversight -- and we've all seen how well that worked out. To date, no serious legislation has been offered by the Obama administration to correct these problems.

Flynt goes on to cite other examples of how the plutocracy controls the economy and the government, even stating that every national financial collapse, from the 1929 stock market crash to the present, was triggered by Goldman Sachs. Flynt's writing makes for interesting reading, citing more history, including the reason for Shay's Rebellion (which was in the news recently as part of the context of the provocateurs [my view] who showed up at presidential speaking events with fire arms strapped to their bodies).

Ever the Don Quixote, Flynt proposes that we all fight back against the hypocrisy, and theft of our nation by the plutocrats:

I'm calling for a national strike, one designed to close the country down for a day. The intent? Real campaign-finance reform and strong restrictions on lobbying. Because nothing will change until we take corporate money out of politics. Nothing will improve until our politicians are once again answerable to their constituents, not the rich and powerful.

Let's set a date. No one goes to work. No one buys anything. And if that isn't effective -- if the politicians ignore us -- we do it again. And again. And again.

The real war is not between the left and the right. It is between the average American and the ruling class. If we come together on this single issue, everything else will resolve itself. It's time we took back our government from those who would make us their slaves.

Maybe Larry Flynt does have something here. A casual reader might chalk all of this up to just some paranoid crackpot, but Flynt has neven been just a crackpot, he is someone who has studied the human condition, someone who does have moral values about hypocrisy and the shafting of the common man and has never been afraid to stand up for his rights. Maybe Larry Flynt is not tilting at windmills, but rather sounding an alarm for all of us.

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