Views > January 31, 2005

R.I.P. FDR?

By Joel Bleifuss

In his inaugural address, George W. Bush accomplished two things. Judging from the accolades, he successfully branded his administration—“freedom” is its name.

And in freedom’s name he laid out an agenda borrowed from the libertarian right—the establishment of an ownership society:

In America’s ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act and the G.I. Bill of Rights. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time. To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will … build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance.

Indeed, his speech could have been written by the Cato Institute’s Tom Palmer, who has said, “The extension of ownership rights to fields that have been dominated by government power—including Social Security, medical care and schooling—represents an opportunity for Americans to enjoy … the responsibility, freedom and prosperity that only ownership can make possible.”

“Ownership society” is a pleasant-sounding euphemism for privatization. And top on the list for privatization is Social Security, the program that allows the government to guarantee an income for those in old age, those whose breadwinner has died or those who have been seriously injured and are unable to work. The program was established as an acknowledgment that we as a people have a collective responsibility to provide for our fellow citizens.

Creating an ownership society, said Bush, will prepare “our people for the challenges of life in a free society [by] making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny.” In other words, it will make everyone a free agent.

Getting rid of Social Security also performs another service. Through the creation of individual retirement accounts, it transfers an immense amount of wealth from the public to the private sector—that is, to the real owners of our society, the 1 percent of the population that owns nearly 40 percent of the nation’s wealth.

In essence, Bush’s proposal to create an “ownership society” bears witness to H.L. Mencken’s definition of an American: “He is intensely and cocksurely moral, but his morality and his self-interest are crudely identical.” Or, as Bush put it, “America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.”

Bush’s interest in “America’s vital interests” is in sharp contrast to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s vision. In his inauguration speech of 1937, FDR warned against “dulled conscience, irresponsibility and ruthless self-interest.” He continued:

In this nation I see … millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day. …We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern. … The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. … Overwhelmingly, we of the Republic are men and women of good will [who] will insist that every agency of popular government use effective instruments to carry out their will. … They will demand a nation uncorrupted by cancers of injustice and, therefore, strong among the nations in its example of the will to peace.

That president created Social Security; the current one seems intent on getting rid of it.

“Americans, of all people, should never be surprised by the power of our ideals,” said Bush, a man whose vision of an “ownership society” represents the death of the ideal that we are all members of a community, and that an injury to one is an injury to all.

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• Reader Comments

  I do not understand the liberals contempt for the idea of an ownership society. By saying that you are against an ownership society - control of YOUR OWN money and finances I get the idea that those on the left while being of good intent I am sure seem to imply that the government knows what is best. I keep getting the idea of big brother knows best from all of this.
  I don’t think anybody wants to get rid of social security. I just believe that the idea of giving a lifetime of savings for retirement to the government to “hold” until your reach retirement age is , well for lack of a better term on my part, dangerous.
  I would like to know beacuse I am not entirely informed on this but does the money we pay now- all our social security “ taxes” go into some form of seperate account that the government has- does it go into the general fund so to speak to be drawn from for government spending . what happens to the money we all pay weekly to the government?

  Posted by reddog on Jan 31, 2005 at 12:41 PM

  Honestly...I don’t know if your an idealist or simply devoid of any concept of the way the REAL world works.

  Posted by Liberal AND Proud on Jan 31, 2005 at 1:46 PM

  Reddog--Answers to questions regarding how Social Security is financed can be found here:

  http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/fundFAQ.html

  The economist Dean Baker also explains both how it works and how “the crisis” we’ve been hearing so much about is much inflated in a previous article:

  http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1738/

  Thanks for reading.

  Posted by Brian Cook on Jan 31, 2005 at 2:49 PM

  Liberals do not have contempt for the idea of an ownership society. The contempt is for the dishonest way that the phrase is used to win support for a plan that will help wall street a whole lot more than it will help main street.

  Posted by Kenneth D. Brown on Jan 31, 2005 at 6:06 PM

  having a grandfather that lived thru the depression I am also not fond of investing on wall street. I think investing in Main street is a lot more practical. But I am also apprehensive of letting either dems or repubs have control over it too. Nither has a good history of living within their means.

  Posted by reddog on Jan 31, 2005 at 6:49 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 40 posts.

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