February 6, 2005 - From Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal at the beginning to the Clinton Administration’s troubled tenure at the end, America’s Twentieth Century was characterized by its growing acceptance of the idea that whatever the crisis and whatever the challenge Americans are in it together. Name the problem – and the solution was to use the unity of the American people harnessing its government to resolve the problems of our society by acting together. That philosophy brought us through two world wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights crisis. That philosophy brought us protection from monopolistic economic power; from unsafe and unhealthy food and quack medicines; from the ravages of pandemic disease; and from the social disease of unequal access to the economic tools of living in a modern society.

At the beginning of America’s Twenty-First Century that philosophy has been discarded in the name of reform. The new philosophy is an old one: Every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. It is an Old Time Political Religion that looks to stamp out the teaching of scientific Darwinism while embracing Nineteenth Century Social Darwinism. This new Old Time Political Religion rejects the social dynamism of America’s bubbling melting pot and seeks to reestablish fossilized series of embedded social strata in which each individual has his place and does not presume to be able to rise above it. It is an Old Time Political Religion that holds the function of government is not to promote the general welfare of all of its citizens but to facilitate the private welfare of those few that fortune and inheritance have placed at the top of the economic pyramid and to keep them there by whatever means necessary. With evangelistic fervor and apocalyptic language the Apostles of the Old Time Political Religion are on the attack – from the airwaves of con-radio to the pulpits of the televangelists to the bully pulpit of the White House itself – preaching a doctrine that says, “I’ve got mine and I’m going to keep it.”

The application of that philosophy is made manifest in the agenda they advance combining economically driven military adventurism abroad with dismantling the Twentieth Century social safety net at home. Enabled by the double drain on the Federal Treasury caused when you invest in war and forego paying for it the Apostles declare a crisis and propose a solution that impacts only those set in the stone of the lower strata of their fossilized society. Dismantle the Social Security System by sending its assets to the pockets of the speculators. Eliminate the consequences of economic predation and call it “Tort Reform”. Cut expensive investment in Public Health programs that have protected and healed those who cannot afford the quality of health care available at the top. Slash support for farmers while continuing to subsidize the giants of the food and fiber distribution industry like ADM and ConAgra. And all the while they send the costs down the road to be paid by our grandchildren.

At the same time as they sacrifice the general welfare for the protection of economic privilege in the name of individual responsibility they discard individual liberty for imposing social control. These Apostles of the Old Time Political Religion seek to reintroduce government supervision into the most intimate and private of our social relationships. In short what they seek is nothing less than the wholesale repeal of the Twentieth Century.