Congressman Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., the first Democratic Socialist in modern American politics, said yesterday that America's living standard is eroding and urged the public to fight the prevailing view that government is always bad.
Sanders delivered his speech, titled "Democracy in Crisis," to a crowd of about 50 people in 105 Dartmouth Hall.
Sanders said American middle-class workers face a bleak economic outlook, exacerbated by a disheartening political situation.
Sanders, Vermont's only Congressman and the first independent in Congress in more than 40 years , said "the most important problem facing this country is that we don't discuss the most important problems."
The first big problem, he said, is the nation's economy.
"All over the country, we've been hearing about the booming economy," he said. "But there are not too many people in the state of Vermont who think the economy is booming for them."
Sanders said the economy is booming for the upper 20 percent of the population, but the rest of the nation is experiencing a "silent depression."
"The standard of living is being whittled away," he said. "The United States has the largest gap, by far, between the rich and the poor of any nation in the industrialized world."
In the last 20 years, the United States went from the highest standard of living in the world to the 13th highest, he said.
"If current trends continue," he said, "then in 20 or 30 years, the United States could look like a country like Mexico, where the vast majority of people struggle to keep their heads above water."
Sanders identified three major economic issues -- trade, technological growth, and corporate power and greed -- as very important to the average, middle-class American worker.
While trade, foreign workers and new technology have reduced the manufacturing jobs available to American workers, corporate America has declared war against its own workers, he said.
"Corporate America has really sold out the American workers," he said. "The jobs have to come back to America."
Sanders also said voter apathy greatly affects the chances for needed reform.
"People have given up on the political process," he said. "They've given up on democracy."
Sanders said the current Republican majority control in Congress is very dangerous to the American worker.
"We need to fight hard against the Gingrich and Limbaugh view that government is inherently evil," he said. "That policy goes back to the law of the jungle and survival of the fittest."
Sanders was elected in 1990. Previously, he served four terms as mayor of Burlington, Vt. from 1981 to 1989.
He has been an independent candidate for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and Vermont governor. He also worked as a professor and free-lance writer.
The speech was the sixth and final in a series on "Inequity and Conflict."
