Zohran Mamdani, the last liberal
Contemporary scholars, pundits, and politicians often describe Social Security as a social insurance program, which each of us pays into during our working years, that, one day, will protect us and other older people against the ravages of poverty.
That description ticks all the boxes of contemporary piety: virtue (you worked for it); prudence (social insurance, setting money aside for a rainy day); fairness (reducing poverty); compassion (for the elderly).
But just take a look for a minute at how Social Security was pushed in 1939 by the Roosevelt administration.
“A monthly check to you—for the rest of your life.”
The phrasing and imagery spill out and over with promises of the good life.
That once was the program of liberalism and the New Deal. The promise of the good life.
When Democrats go after Zohran Mamdani, who is virtually the only Democrat today who speaks in anything like those cadences of the New Deal, that is what they’re going after: the party they once were.
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5 Comments
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Noway
Write On! Brother.
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Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant
Hard not to notice the exceptions to eligibility for Social Security at that time: “Agriculture, domestic services, and government work”.
Much has already been written on that matter, so I don’t need to add anything there.
It is worth noting that the contemporary removal of “the good life” as an ideal and as a reward for one’s years of participation in the American labor force is part of that ideological suppression that has also edited out the notion of the “future” as a good that we consciously create and towards which we collectively strive. I think MLK was America’s last politically active public personality that did speak of the “future” and did so in such terms.
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Ed
Yup,
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john van sickle
yet another irony remarked
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Stephen Zielinski
According to Chomsky, Nixon was the last liberal. And the DP cigar stub guys had to sabotage McGovern to make that happen.