The Religious Wrong-Wing and Social Security
Wed Mar 09, 2005 at 06:00:26 PM PDT
Whatever the factors that foreshadow the imminent demise of Social Security, the destruction of millions of would-have-been taxpayers through legalized abortion must be considered one of the most potent. Ironically, many of the nearly 50 million unborn children destroyed by abortionists at the behest of their mothers had their lives ended for economic reasons. The children whose birth presented such an economic threat to their parents are now the missing pieces in their parents economic future.
(Taken from a quoted block in azindy's excellent Evangelicals and Stem Cells diary)
This quote brought back to mind a few discussions with some of the more fundamentalist wingers I know, and resulted in a bit of an epiphany. In short, even though their religion calls upon them to help the poor and needy, these "Christians" fight against social security as part of their culture war.
Yes, that's right. It's another front of the culture war. Read the last part carefully:
The children whose birth presented such an economic threat to their parents are now the missing pieces in their parents economic future.
While the author, in this case, is blaming the social security crisis on the abortionists (you can bet that if he couldn't make that logic work, Clinton would be next on his list), that's not the context you usually hear this logic from fundamentalist wingers in.
The context you usually hear this logic in is a tirade about the importance of the family. These loonies claim that a government-mandated euthenasia program directed at seniors is inevitable within our lifetimes. Why's that? Because a lot of people - especially well-to-do people - aren't having children. An in order to survive in your old age, you need to have children, who can devote part of their income to keeping you in the style to which you are accustomed. So you need to have lots of children, and have them early, so they've got lots of money by the time you reach retirement age.
A short digression is necessary at this point, for those tuning in late. In the Southern US, there is still quite a lot of social pressure for young people to marry and have kids early. Right out of high school, in many cases. Those that don't - especially those girls that don't - are looked down upon as wasting their lives. In more ways than one, these wingers have never moved beyond the 18th Century. And now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming.
There's a slight problem with their doom-and-gloom picture. Social security and the looming spectre of universal health care. Even in the most pessimistic forecasts I've seen (those issued by the Congressional Budget Office, I believe), FDR's legacy is viable through the end of the century. And that's assuming truly abysmal economic growth - bad enough that even Bush would be hard-pressed to screw up our economy that much. And while it won't make you rich, it will save you from eating cat food and let you live fairly well, even if you don't have kids. And universal health care would drastically cut or even eliminate the amount seniors have to pay for their medication.
This terrifies the evangelical wingers. It turns their gloom-and-doom "have kids now" death threat into a sun-and-roses "you don't need kids, but you'll probably like them" affair.
So throw yet another reason onto the growing pile of reasons why we need to protect FDR's legacy from Gihren... Er... Grover's Greed. Not only is it the right thing to do - for retirees should be able to live in relative comfort - but it's yet another front in the right-wing culture war.
The Republican War on Social Security - Take No Prisoners.
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