Is there no difference between people in need and people dependent on government? Are people in need of security, whether it be protection from criminals or national defense, not dependent on branches of government? Are not the captains of industry dependent on government that insures their holdings and estate will be forever safe? Are not the super wealthy beholden to the government’s Federal Reserve preventing run-on banks that would jeopardize their funds and also are they not beholden to the SEC and regulation to oversee their investments? Are not the educated upper middle and higher classes dependent on government to perpetuate their well-being by supplying rules of law to a society dependent on good education and the domain of further opportunity? Is this, too, enslavement as per another blogger’s definition?
Were the millions of WWII veterans--who before the war thought college or technical schools but a dream-- enslaved by the government which granted them free tuition to further their education and as a consequence generated a massive middle class never before realized? And is it surprising that this new middle class was overwhelmingly Democrat? And is it surprising that the upper class, many of whom were in the marginal tax rate of upwards of 90+%, overwhelmingly Republican, and to lower the bracket, indirectly forced to contribute huge sums to education and humanitarian foundations? Were the rich really held in bondage when in reality the commonwealth prospered like never before and since?
Where would the current generation be were it not for social security? Would it not be forced to abandon the previous generation of parents or assist them in their need? What would the working people’s reaction be if they were hit with the medical bills of their parents? Where would today’s generation be had it not been for the infusion of federal support since Sputnik to our public schools, and the extraordinary innovations and head start the boomers were bestowed by US commitment to be the very best in the field of learning for all children through the Johnson years? “Failing schools’ was not in the lexicon, nor was there talk then of leave no child behind but rather to develop learning sequence to keep them abreast of the world’s knowledge.
If there are too many unwashed today dependent on government hand outs, blame the entire nation for the glitch in its memory chips for deleting the heart out of the Democratic Party and writing in the self-gain of Conservatives.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: February 7, 2004.