I GOTTA’ ADDRESS THIS DEMOCRAT THING It aint your daddy’s party
I was raised a Democrat. My Dad inspired me. North Dakota had just come out of the Great Depression. And the party was the party of the people..voiced from every town hall, grange meeting, union hall, barbershop, grocery store, and gas station. The mantra of the Democratic party, then, was driven ‘bottom-up.’ The ultra-liberal ‘top-down’ Government knows best’ was not in the picture anywhere. The party mantel was that of using collective bargaining to achieve a balance between the two parties. The implementation of equal opportuity for and equal protection of individual rights was sustained largely at the state level; that is, as close to the individual as possible. During the early 20th century, the party even instigated socialism at the state level via the Non-Partisan League…which remained an active component of the Party until WWII.
The change from ‘then’ to ‘now’ was triggered by the programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The lesson learned since then is that you can’t fix social and economic inequality by throwing money at the problem, I learned this personally during the early 1970’s when I had an apartment house in Cedar Rapids occupied largely by welfare recipients. I got to know the families pretty well. By then, they were 2nd generation welfare families where the requisite to receive entitlement support per child was that the father could not co-occupy living quarters. Nobody worked. Incentive is the magic of the American dream, and the society-wide application of some entitlements removes incentive from the equation. The most flagrant current abuses of entitlements are the abuse of food stamps and Social Security Disability. While these entitlements mean well as regards the disadvantaged and poverty stricken, the administration resources needed are huge and add further to large government
I am no longer a staunch Democrat. My father did teach me to use my mind and not just mindlessly endorse or choose anything that didn’t make sense. Right now, there are many things that don’t make sense associated with both Democratic and Republican partys. We see scandals and abuses of power today that would never have been condoned two generations ago. There is just not the passion of the people to rise up and correct these situations as it was then.
Please, once again, make the democratic party the party of the people, administered by the people at the lowest level of government that is feasible.