At a recent town hall meeting on health care, a tearful woman demanded: "I want MY America back." The Republicans insist that the protesters at these gatherings are not the product of an organized conservative movement or fears aroused by the false claims of Sarah Palin or Charles Grassley about death panels, but rather are the result of grass roots opposition to the intervention of government in their lives and the fear of creeping socialism. Apparently, they long to continue the days of insurance companies denying coverage, refusing to pay when it exists or finally, terminating a policy if forced to pay.
When called upon to explain why the government is acting like "Nazis" or the president reminds them of "Hitler," they point to the bailout of the banks as an example. So I was envisioning a cartoonist who displays in a bubble what a person is thinking. What were those good old days without government interference when we had those freedoms the Constitution promised us and before the government took them away?....Let me think -- (as nostalgic harp music plays):
Why can't we go back to the time when we just let banks fail and people lost their money without these bailouts and FDIC insurance? What about those happy days when we could employ 10- and 11-year-olds in our sweat shops, before those child labor laws? Or stop or bust labor unions without those pesky labor laws? How about the time when you could take advantage of employees before the minimum wage laws spoiled it? Remember those good old days when old people couldn't buy food or pay their rent without Social Security or could not get health care without Medicare?
Or when poor people starved without welfare and couldn't get health care without Medicaid? And what about the greatness of G.I.'s coming home from the wars, many of them wounded, who couldn't get a college education, and now that damn government comes along with this G.I. Bill. And how about guns. 30,000 people could get killed every year and 70,000 wounded and we could have automatic weapons. Oh, wait a minute. We still have that. Forget that.
Remember when lazy, unemployed people would have to shift for themselves and just get a job, before unemployment benefits came along. Remember when we could keep "those people" out of our neighborhoods, clubs, restaurants, and jobs and discriminate against women before those damn civil rights laws were enacted. We could get lung cancer from cigarettes, take defective drugs and eat poisoned food before that meddling FDA began telling us what was good and what was bad for us. And we wouldn't have had that inefficient postal service which has been delivering our mail for more than a hundred years. Any fool could have seen that e-mail was coming and now look how much money the government is losing. And now they want everyone to have health care. I want MY America back!
"Those were the days, my friend."