RUDE AWAKENING :

Putting Lipstick on a Pig (P.M. Carpenter, 6-24-02, History News Network)

Much of what passes for serious policy proposals today would have been laughed out of the political barn yesterday. Privatize Social Security? You may recall that when Barry Goldwater in 1964 suggested something similar--making it "voluntary"--national reaction was unmistakably clear: the man must have a screw loose.

But here we are, treating these particulars of madness as acceptable, run-of-the-mill politics. How, indeed, did things get so far?

A comprehensive answer would require whole teams of sociopolitical historians working around the clock on uppers for years. The short and fundamental answer, however, points in all its simplicity to a politically indifferent citizenry--one that, when it's paying attention at all, seems incredibly susceptible to incredibly superficial claims made by incredibly deceptive political leaders. Want more money in your old age? No problem. Simply divert part of those pesky Social Security taxes to a private account, which in no way will do injury to the in-place retirement system. (For heaven's sake dear colleagues, said a recent Republican Party memorandum, don't admit to "privatization"; that would play into "Democratic demagoguery" on the issue.)

Such is the lipstick put on the pig of public contrivances these days.

Here's an explanation that probably hasn't occurred to Mr. Carpenter : perhaps we bedded down with that pig forty years ago when LBJ told us that
we could just keep transferring more and more money to ourselves in the form of higher and higher Social Security benefits. And today we've woken up, rolled over, and found ourselves next to that hog but minus the pretty makeup that the Democrats had applied. Maybe the point is not that citizens were smart enough then to catch on to Barry Goldwater, but that experience has taught them that he was right all along. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 1, 2002 6:13 PM