Category: default || By jt3y

One of my most memorable high school teachers was my United States history teacher, a rock-ribbed conservative. He lived near the school and every day, as we arrived for class, we could see two flags flying in front of his house --- an American flag and one from The Citadel, the military academy in South Carolina that he attended as a boy. He also painted the rocks in front of his house red, white and blue.

His homeroom was decorated with battle scenes and model warplanes and he was rumored to carry a pistol. I'm sure the PTA, the school's insurance carrier and the teacher's union would blow several different kinds of gaskets about that now, but in those pre-Columbine days we kids viewed it as rebellious and quirky, not frightening.

My point, and I do have one, is that he was not exactly a flaming liberal.

Obviously, he had a pretty strong sense of right and wrong, and a strong sense of duty to country. But he also had a strong sense of civic responsibility and our duty to take care of society, and our neighbors. He'd frequently ask a student their opinion on some societal problem, and woe betide those who gave some namby-pamby answer, or worse, said something selfish.

Then he'd snort derisively and point a piece of chalk at the class. "That's the problem with this generation," he'd say. "It's all 'hooray for me, and to hell with you! I've got mine!' Nobody cares about the other guy."

He passed away several years ago. Yet I've often found myself thinking about him recently, and wondering what he'd make of the current Republican Party. I think he'd be solidly in their corner on moral issues, but I have a strong feeling the rest of their platform would drive him crazy. Especially this whole Social Security debate.

There seems to be a real nihilistic streak in the national Republican leadership. The whole idea that someone, somewhere, might be getting something they didn't pay for just seems to drive them buggy. They have strained mightily to convince the public that there is some terrible crisis coming in Social Security, only to have others point out that, no, the system is solvent for at least the next 40 years.

So they switched gears. Social Security was going to add $3.5 trillion to the national debt, they crowed --- only to fall silent when several critics pointed out that the President's privatization plan would add $4.5 trillion to the national debt.

Now, they're back to their old standby: "It's your money. Why shouldn't you keep your money? Who is the government to maintain a retirement fund for you?"

(As illustrated in Tuesday's Almanac, the very people pushing this privatization plan the hardest have lavish government retirement funds waiting for them.)

The very idea of Social Security just burns them up, I think. It's not about any possible deficit 20 or 40 or 100 years from now. They just don't want government paying money to anyone, because it bugs them.

So maybe the real Republican Party argument against Social Security ought to be my teacher's famous saying: "Hooray for me, and the hell with you! I've got mine!"

They've got theirs. Who cares if you get anything?

And why should the government make sure people have "social security"?

You know, that's funny, because it brings me back to my teacher. He grew up during the Depression. And used to tell us stories of having to eat fried dough for dinner because his family was on what was then called "relief."

See, there was no welfare system. If you lost your job, or your primary wage-earner died or became ill, you were out of luck, and dependent on charity. Maybe, if you were fortunate, your town would take up a collection and give the poor a sack of flour to make fried dough. Often, people who went on "relief" had to grovel and humiliate themselves before they'd qualify for a handout.

As for retirement, you worked until you got too old or ill, and then you moved in with your family. If you didn't have a family, you lived on the street, or in a shanty town somewhere, until you died.

When the economy was roaring along in the 1920s, things were OK, because most people could find work doing something. But when the crash came, American society ground to a halt. The country was flirting dangerously with Communism and socialism when the Roosevelt administration came along with radical ideas like unemployment compensation, welfare, disability insurance and Social Security. They didn't end the Depression, but they stitched together the national fabric just long enough to keep the country from collapse.

Franklin Roosevelt had this novel idea that forcing large numbers of people to go out and pick garbage or beg for charity handouts was bad, because eventually, it was going to cause American society to break down. So despite the fact that FDR very much had his, he didn't say to hell with the rest of America.

I'm not sure that certain elements in the national Republican Party really care that much about "society." They talk a lot about "moral values," but the idea of working toward the collective, common good of their fellow man just escapes them. They've got theirs. Hooray for them!

The worrisome thing is that they've implanted this selfishness into the national consciousness. If my teacher were alive today, he'd practically be a pinko. Just the other day, there was a letter to the editor of the Post-Gazette from a fellow in Hampton Township complaining about public transportation. Why, the letter writer demanded to know, should he be taxed to pay for buses? After all, he doesn't ride buses.

I suppose it never occurred to him that the people who work in the stores or restaurants that he frequents might rely on buses to get to those jobs. Some of them might even be former welfare recipients who were told to get off the dole, and go get jobs. (I happen to agree with "welfare-to-work," by the way.) But now that they've got jobs, maybe we can take their transportation to those jobs away.

Hooray for the letter writer, and to hell with the people who ride the buses! He's got his!

I'm not sure what it's going to take to smarten some people up. I just hope like hell it isn't another Depression.

Because I like eating fried dough at a carnival or fair, but I'm not sure I'd like it for dinner.