You may recall the now-iconic phrase that emerged during the Tea Party rise in our national politics around the 2010 elections: “Take your government hands off my Medicare!” Now there was a valid point to it–Republicans in Congress were threatening to pass a budget that would end “Medicare as we know it.”
But the directive also betrayed a deep confusion about the role of the national government in citizens’ lives, suggesting that a major social safety net program was not a program of government. Indeed, political science research published in 2010 found that 40 percent of Medicare recipients surveyed denied that they had ever benefitted from a government social program.
Laughable as this level of civic ignorance struck many of us at the time, in fact it poses a significant threat to the stability and security of American society. If citizens badly misunderstand their basic relationships with government, then they are more vulnerable to the distortions and appeals of demagogues. Continue reading “Will Freedom Kill Liberty?”
