A standard phrase heard these days on Republican presidential campaign trails is the pledge to "take America back", but as often as I've heard that phrase repeated in one form or another, I've never heard anybody answer the simple question that arises in my mind – back to when? If, as the Republican candidates are suggesting, Americans are yearning to return to better days gone by, you'd think that somebody would supply a date so the rest of us could set the calendar on the time machine that's supposedly going to take us there. Is that too much to ask?
Let's take a few moments and examine our options. Do we want to give up our modern electrical conveniences, empty our cities and return to 1773, when rioters in Boston were busy dumping tea into the water, or 1775, when most colonists owned a gun and there was no income tax or food stamps, but an eight-year war on American soil was about to begin and half the infants born died before reaching their first birthday?
How about 1861? Those were certainly happy times. A Republican (Abe Lincoln) was ensconced in the White House. Republicans controlled Congress. Over seventy percent of all white Americans owned a gun, blacks knew their place (slaving away on a plantation) and there was no income tax. Of course, that was also the year when Southern Democratic soldiers (a/k/a Confederate Forces) attacked the United States military base at Fort Sumter in South Carolina - commencing the Civil War, meaning that three quarter of a million Americans were about to meet a very violent death. Another five hundred thousand would sustain serious injury before the war was over, but at least folks didn't have "Obama-care" or Medicare shoved down their throats.
How about 1906? That was a vintage year. A Republican (Theodore Roosevelt) was enjoying his stay at the White House. Most American women (except for a few loud-mouths in the suffrage movement) knew their place, over half of all Americans owned a gun and government regulations didn't interfere with industry demands that kids put in a 16-hour work day and labor in unsafe conditions. Kids lucky enough to attend school started the day with a prayer and got their butts lashed with a belt (at school & at home) if they stepped out of line. Sure, lots of Americans were dying from tainted foods and work-related injuries, but people didn't have to pay income tax to fund government inspectors or put up with the A.C.L.U. suing to keep a crèche display off government property.
What about 1930? What a year! Another Republican (Herbert Hoover) was living comfortably in the White House. American industry had its first pro-business President and a half-million Mexican immigrants were forcibly returned to the land of their birth so they wouldn't compete with American citizens for the scarce number of jobs available after the 1929 stock market crash. Sure, by then America had a federal income tax and Hoover raised the top tax rate from 24% to 63% of net income. Everybody errs now and then, even Republican presidents. A mere 5000 U.S. banks had failed within ten months and tens of millions of Americans were homeless and penniless, but gun control was not on anybody's agenda, government waste was not an issue and welfare queens simply didn't exist. How can folks resist taking America back to those good old days?
How about 1957? There's another exciting year! I was born in February, a celebrated Republican ("Ike" Eisenhower) was running things in the White House and Elvis Presley was lighting up the stage on the Ed Sullivan Show. The Ku Klux Klan were keeping blacks in their place down South, Jim Crow laws did the same up North and the F.B.I. was hot on the trail of union leader, Jimmy Hoffa. Plus, men could slap their wives if dinners were cold without worrying about being socked with a protection from abuse order. Yeah, the top federal tax rate for earned income was 91% (kind of high for a Republican President), most American T.V.s were still black and white sets and the Asian flu claimed 70,000 American lives that year, but at least the government wasn't wasting money on medical research and people could still buy a pack of cigarettes without a government-mandated warning label. Back then, cars could spew as much pollutants into the atmosphere as their super-charged engines would muster and anybody who wanted to buy a gun could do so – no questions asked (unless, of course, you were black). Just thinking of those days brings a tear to my eye.
What about 1982? That's the year when Republican icon, "the Gipper" (a/k/a Ronald Reagan) was in control of the White House and the hearts of modern-day conservatives. Deregulation and trickle-down economics were all the rage. The federal air traffic controllers' union lay in ruins. American armed forces went on a spending spree to bankrupt the Soviet Union while federal spending on social programs designed to help the poor and disabled was slashed by sixty (60%) percent. Yeah, the U.S. unemployment rate hit 10.8 percent (not like Obama's current 8.3%) and liberals were successful in passing a federal ban on assault weapons following the assassination attempt on Reagan's life by that wing-nut, John Hinkley, but the top federal income tax rate for wage earners fell from 60% to 50%, ketchup gained official recognition as a vegetable for federally funded school lunch programs and the National Rifle Association acquired its most potent political weapon since the invention of gunpowder. What could be a better time to be alive?
If Republican presidential candidates are serious about taking America back – choose a year, and then, let's talk!
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