Most everyone knows that in 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt sponsored and enacted the Social Security Act.

President Herbert Hoover, who led us into the Great Depression, opposed this legislation along with many Republicans. He said that Social Security was built on a cult of leisure, not a cult of work. It is said that the Republican opposition was bitter toward the SSA.

Actually Social Security was largely inspired by the example of some of the more highly industrialized nations of Europe. Someday an American president will follow the leading nations in Europe in their example in health care.

Recently a college professor friend (from Texas, no less) sent this statement to me: “Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

This statement was made by one of America’s most courageous and respected war heroes, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1952.

Imagine how Eisenhower would feel if he knew that splinter group had grown to be in control of the administration, the Congress and the federal courts of the United States of America.

More depressing is that if he knew the United States had pre-emptively attacked a small country on false premises.

Nat Crowley Sr.

Stockton Springs