In my examiner article today, I focused on Will Rogers, the much beloved cowboy and humorist, and America's wit and sage of the Great Depression. Long before Elizabeth Warren was explaining how rich people didn't get that way on their own, Will Rogers more eloquently put it in a radio address to the nation in October 1931. He said even the poorest of us contribute to the richest, and the richest owe something back to the poor when economic crises make employment impossible for so many Americans.
That was true in the Great Depression. That is true today.
Yet, to listen to Republicans, and especially Teabagger members tell it, the notion of the government spending money to help the unemployed and the poor—and people suffering from natural disasters (in addition to the disasters made by rich people)—is socialism, and anti-American.
But Will Rogers plainly said that what the nation needed was wealth redistribution, higher taxes on the wealthy, and America's natural liberal heart to win out over the greed of the "rich babies".