Have you noticed change in language?

A couple of generations ago, FDR and the other New Dealers talked about the idea of “social security.”

Security is protection. The idea was that there should be some form of protection for the elderly and disabled.

That protection was shocking at the time, but today it would seem shocking only in its modest goals. It originally protected people who were no longer able to work from destitution. Many still lived in poverty, but they didn’t starve.

Today, the political discourse is not about security, social or otherwise, but about “entitlement,” a word that has taken on the nasty connotation of being something for freeloaders to enjoy.

We’ve gone from a debate about whether to protect to a debate about something else entirely.

The sensible thing to do would be to encourage our national leaders to retrace their steps to the original idea and to see whether that’s achievable in a way that’s affordable.