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PDY Blog for 3-2-05 Tom Hughes of Democracy for America has asked for people to write in their personal stories about social security. You can contribute yours at www.democracyforamerica.com/socialsecuritystories. Here’s the one I sent in: My Daddy’s Party Anybody who grew up in a household like the one I did is surely not surprised by the current crusade of lies and disinformation about Social Security. George Bush and his Republican conspirators aren’t out to “cure” one of the few government programs that sustains itself and works for all of us, they are flat out to destroy it. I am a liberal Democrat because of my father. He never voted anything but a straight Republican ticket and spent half a lifetime railing against the Democratic reforms of the 1930s. Born in 1889 in a house built by slaves in Yancey County, N.C., my daddy never worked a day for anybody else after he was a teenager. He bought his first farm when he was 21. By the time he was 30, he owned several farms, built and named his own community of houses, and operated greenhouses, a slaughterhouse and a vineyard. At 41, in 1930, he lost everything but the old home place where I was born when he was 52 years old. He never blamed big business or the government or anybody else for his or the national economy’s failure and the resulting depression. His chief religion was self reliance. He believed if you worked hard, you got what you wanted out of life. If you didn’t work hard, you didn’t deserve anything from anybody. The old man was not merely a racist, he considered African-Americans sub-human animals and referred to them only as bucks and wenches. Blacks were never allowed on our property—except, of course, for Aunt Cindy and Uncle Sol and Willie Mae and Mr. Leonard and others whom he knew and loved personally. When President Franklin Roosevelt began the government programs that saved American capitalism, my father reacted like many another businessman who had lost his shirt thanks to the laissez-faire policies of a decade of Republicans. He dug in his heels and blindly refused to admit there was anything wrong that needed fixing by the government. He blamed Roosevelt when he had to start paying his workers more than $1.25 a day. As late as 1950, the foreman on our farm was paid only $25.00 a week. Like thousands of other farmers during the Depression, my father plowed under acres and acres of vegetables rather than sell them at deflated prices. It didn’t even occur to him to give them to all those around him who were starving. Let them work hard and grow their own food the way he had. Sadly, the old man outlived his time and his own life came to contradict his politics. He was opposed to government restrictions on pollution, but he couldn’t fish in the nearest river. It was a health hazard with no live fish in it. He sat helpless for any relief in 1952 when our farm was condemned and closed because the city of Asheville was dumping raw sewage into the creek where we got our irrigation water. He had been bitterly opposed to new taxes in any form. He thought Roosevelt’s plan for Social Security was a dangerous step toward communism. If I remember correctly, farmers were originally exempt from paying Social Security taxes. You could join if you wanted to, but you didn’t have to. Happily, my mother was the social and philosophical opposite of my father. They cancelled each other’s votes every election. She had insisted on paying into Social Security from the beginning. With the farm collapsed around us and the old man suffering from six long years of strokes and heart attacks, we would have had no money for food in the old man’s embittered last years if we had not gotten those monthly Social Security checks. And we had been so much “better off” than any of our neighbors. I cannot help but wonder about these plutocrats in power now. Like my father, they may think their wealth will always be there. And like my father, they may learn the hard way that all that they have managed to accumulate can be wiped away by one irregular heart beat. And, like my father, they may learn to appreciate that Social Security will be there when nobody and nothing else is. HOME • COMMENTARY • BOOKS • PLAYS • CONTACT |