Let us consider the latest from NY Times columnist David Brooks:
The larger, far more important point is that in a society as individualistic as ours, it’s especially important to protect and nurture the countervailing institutions. It’s so easy for the powerful force of individualism to wash over and transform institutions – like family, religion and the military – that are supposed to be based on self-sacrifice, loyalty and love.
Interesting. One such "countervailing institution" could be easily said to be Social Security. The Social Security program, after all, is essentially a "sacrifice" (in the form of payroll taxes) made by people currently in the workforce designed to prevent people who are currently old and disabled from sinking into poverty. We, the current workers, pay now, and we in turn expect that future generations will do the same for us when we need it. We expect, in other words, that future generations will remain "loyal" to the promise that the Social Security program represents. It is really quite a noble thing – a transgenerational compact that has worked well for several generations.
One could also read Brooks’s column to be quite clearly opposed to Bush’s privatization plan for Social Security. After all, private accounts are as "individualistic" as it gets, and have nothing to with the virtues of self-sacrifice, loyalty and love that Brooks praises.
But no, Brooks is actually more or less in favor of Bush’s ghastly plan to destroy Social Security. What he was actually writing about (God only knows why) was married couples who maintain separate checking accounts. The odd thing is that he seems to have no idea how easily his pious pronouncements in one context directly contradict his views in another (he has had this problem before). What a dink.
