Republicans are shifting blame for economic woes

This writer wondered how long it would take until Fox-Limbaugh Inc. would morph Barack Obama from George Bush as the cause of this longtime developing economic disaster. This even after our previous president and his treasury secretary went hat-in-hand to Congress in 2008 and asked them to save capitalism from itself. This after conservative guru Alan Greenspan admitted he blew it. He trused the marketplace to regulate itself. How naive can you be?

Anyway, my wonderment has ended. Obama’s urgent efforts are met from the Right with their usual cries of big-government “creeping socialism.” It’s taken less than eight weeks of Obama vs. eight years of Bush to establish Barack as the real villain here.

I was teaching a senior government class in 1964 at old Bloomington High School – a few months after John Kennedy died and three years before the high school burned. In a multiple-choice test question I asked, “Who said this? ‘The Government should do for the people what the people can’t do so well for themselves.’ Choices: Barry Goldwater, Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt. No one chose Goldwater (smart kids), several Marx, some FDR and very few Lincoln.

One of my more precocious students asked (referring to Lincoln’s words), “Mr. Gregory, isn’t this socialism? You know, like practically communism?” I simply responded, “Make up your own mind.”

As they condemn government intervention, some politically right people, are still trying to make up their minds about Lincoln – maybe even my student in the class of ’64.
For sure, activist Abe would find present-day Republican neo-cons strange company.

Jerry Gregory
IU alumnus