I will try to recapture the spirit of a recent rant I made in the presence of futurenow, recently.

He was asserting that there's no social security crisis. It's a common left-bent complaint about the Cancer-in-Chief. And I shot back at him: well, gee, we shouldn't even *have* social secuirity! It's true, we shouldn't.

Oh, don't get me wrong...you can safely assume that if George W. Bush says privatization (or personal accounts, or whatever his euphemism of the day is) is the key to saving Social Security, it's the key to bankrupting it. I mean, that's really what he does...fails at every single thing he does. (Name something that he hasn't failed at, other than getting elected with someone else's brain and other folk's largesse.)

But it comes down to this: the government should protect its citizenry, and ensure it's own future. And, I think, governments should do nothing else. (I'm still chewing on that last part.)

And social security doesn't meet either of these most-important-goals. Social Security forces the government into the socialist idea of "taking care" of the elderly. Seriously...my parents should be my responsibility. If they did a fine job raising me and treating others the way good citizens do, others will take care of them. And if they did neither of these things, should the government really take care of them?

No, if we're going to have social programs, doesn't it make sense to target the *future*. Instead of dumping money into the past (elderly), why not put it into the future? (Again I'm not saying people shouldn't take care of the elderly---I'm saying it shouldn't be the government's role.) Why not dump all that money into education and socialized medical care for those under 18. That way, we're increasing the likelihood of future contributions, rather than paying off past ones. And you know what? People who live right will end up being taken care of.

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Yes, yes, I still struggle with any deviation from what seems to me to be the ideal motto for any government: the three E's---Education, Economy, and Environment. Those three things are investment in our future.

(And yet we have the Governator gutting the first E and disregarding the 3rd E, and refusing to raise taxes to take care of the 3rd E. When the Oracle from Omaha suggested we needed to raise taxes, it took a mighty big ego to suggest he was wrong.)