Re: Eisenhower Quote
From: Steve

I think you are slightly mistaken regarding your contemporary analysis of Ike vs. the current Republican agenda. People within this administration have been gleefully stating they now, finally, have the opportunity hoped for for 60 years: to ABOLISH social security, albeit incrementally. Bush chose not to repudiate nor contradict these comments.

Furthermore, Gingrich et al were very clear that the way to defund the entitlement programs was to overspend-- essentially bankrupt the system so that only national defense, law enforcement and debt service were within the purview of the federal government. This was also explicit in the agenda.

Reagan gave America permission to blame the poor for being poor, to hold in high status the well-to-do, regardless of the means by which they got there. Gingrich et al made the correlation between capitalism and evolution an equivalence, but missed the actual meaning of the evolutionary principle of "survival of the fittest": It does NOT mean, never has, "survival of the strongest". It means "survival of the most fit for a specific niche" to ensure the survival of the species, not survival of the individual. It's about a place in every niche for those 'most fit' to function therein. The objective is survival of one's species, even if it occasionally to the detriment of the individual. It means protecting the essential integrity of an individually diverse and therefore resilient species, no matter how seemingly specialized the species may be. Ask a biologist.

(Not that the right wing believes in evolution as a fundamental principle of life, it serves only as a convenient, albeit secular, model of the strongest having a right to dominate without equivocation nor altruism.)