In traditional democratic theory, legitimate government rests upon the consent of the governed and the ability of the government to serve the overall common good of its entire population. Traditional democratic theory, however, was formulated in the 18^th century by such thinkers as Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Kant and refined further by thinkers of the 19^th century such as Mill, Hegel, and Marx. Before the 20^th century, however, two factors had not yet developed to any significant extent that together challenge the traditional conception of the legitimacy of today’s governments: (1) Wall Street along with comparable stock exchanges around the world and (2) global crises like climate collapse, global pollution, global population explosion, global poverty, and global WMDs.

Today, around the world people are camping out, marching in protest, and occupying public parks in protest of the strangulation of the world’s economy by the 1% who control the lion’s share of the world’s wealth and power. These 1% have further empowered and entrenched themselves by owning the industrial military complexes of the world that make immense profits from a world of perpetual wars, conflicts, and violence. They have entrenched themselves by owning or controlling the mass media of the world, which then spins the news to cover, protect, and legitimize the 1%. Finally, these 1% have colonized governments around the world directly (as, for example, the government of Saudi Arabia) or indirectly through buying politicians (as, for example, the government of the US).

The 1% by and large have transcended national loyalties and are at the helm of multinational corporations and banks, doing business on a global scale, and willing, for example, to export the industrial base of the US (and its jobs) overseas in order to maximize their margin of profit. They travel the world in private jets, stay at exclusive five star hotels built in every country for their convenience, and associate with one another in exclusive clubs and forums closed to the 99%. In response to these obscenities, the 99% have not yet presented a set of coherent demands, but implicit in their anger at the 1% are rather obvious demands for jobs, decent benefits like health care and social security, ending wars, protecting the environment, and protecting democracy with its rights to dissent, free speech, assembly, due process of law, and effective political participation.

For decades, the 1% have used their effective control over the big imperial governments to manipulate the fragmented world system of some 192 nation-states to their advantage. They have controlled the foreign policy of the US and its imperial allies in their service, overthrowing the democratically elected governments of Guatemala and Iran in 1954 and instituting dictatorships in both countries who flung their countries open to exploitation by multinational corporations. They were behind the wars against Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in the 60s and 70s, supported the invasion of East Timor in 1975, and the overthrow of democracy in Chile in 1973, where the US installed a dictator who instituted the Neo-liberal "shock therapy" of unfettered privatized capitalism. These examples could be multiplied by the dozen. As Noam Chomsky has repeatedly asserted, the principle of the 1% controlling the militarized imperial nations has been to remove "the threat of a good example" anywhere it might appear in the world. The fragmented system of 192 independent nations facilitates their power and control. It keeps the people of Earth divided, so that the 1% can conquer.