For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent to humanity
This influence FDR is speaking of never seems to go away. The economically powerful are willing to let humanity suffer to any degree for their own comforts to be maintained. We are up against them again as they were then, if not more so. They've had 30 years to dumb down the population and by the looks of the tea-bagger movement, they've been wildly successful. They've made civic classes and civil service optional and even something to be ridiculed. A special note of thanks to Mr. Reagan for that.
Imagine a world without government in service for the welfare of its people. In its place would be rule by fear and intimidation by those willing to be more cruel than the last, forced servitude into armies at the threat of starvation or death, no recourse to justice, the air and water unprotected from exploitation, children forced to work in factories and fields for pennies a day, garbage collecting on streets until it rots away, schools shut down and a person's worth is only as good as his or her labor, prisons for debtors and dissidents, vigilantes and gangs in the age of machine guns and bombs.
This isn't fantasy, it's what history teaches us about cause and effect. It doesn't happen overnight but for the first time in my life I can see for the US that it's on the horizon in the direction we're going. In many parts of this world, it's already here.
We pay taxes to collectively make a better world that would otherwise be impossible by individual or localized effort alone. We have millions of citizens of this country who have nothing but vitriolic hatred toward that which has made their lives tolerable - a government built on the principle that it exists to serve the welfare of humanity. They do not know what they are fighting for. they think its for lower taxes and greater economic opportunity but in reality it's for a government that serves only the economic interests of a few wealthy individuals.
One thing I know is that these people alive today who cry out for government to keep out of health care will never change except through great suffering. The trouble is that all of us who realize the benefit and importance of a strong, civic-minded government would also need to suffer along with them in order for them to learn. If we are unwilling to suppress the cancer of their hatred, it will overtake us. The most peaceful means would be to enact single-payer health insurance, do the right thing over their objections, and let them die of old age in a better world they only hold in contempt. The other option is to cut them out of the equation through violent revolution in which many would die on both sides. And we would be risking the loss of the very principles we hope to live by.
If we cannot enact legislation to make this a better world because special interests continue to divert our resources (i.e., the taxes we pay) away from our health, education and welfare, then what choice do they leave us with? They do not consider that because they don't care about us except to use us for our labor. We are only a commodity to be controlled through both physical and psychological means. Only if they keep us ignorant of history, ignorant of the power of our minds, our hearts and our hands, will they be able to enslave us indefinitely.
The Hindus and Buddhists call the level of existence we are in "samsara" - the cycle of birth, life, and death. And they say we will inevitably suffer until we escape out of it. I can understand the natural suffering of loss but the kind of suffering we cause ourselves seems so unnecessary. Do we exist only to personally escape out of this kind of hell, or is there a possibility of making this an existence in which great things may grow into being, flourish, and then pass away in natural time. What stands in our way is ignorance. It is this ignorance that I see as what these tea-baggers of today represent.
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