Louis Roney: Something for Nothing

When I was a kid, I was expected to be a “Southern Gentleman.” I stood when elders entered the room. I helped ladies with their chairs at the dinner table and I helped them in and out of automobiles. When addressing my elders I always said “Yes ma’am,” or “Yes sir” – and I always told the truth. Most of my friends were raised the same way.

Today, I still find myself using those old southern customs, and I notice a smile of surprise on faces of those who recognize such an archaic upbringing.

Astute savants of American history must often be surprised when they consider the actual origins of American Liberalism and Conservatism.

My God!, it was nobody else but original Republican, Lincoln, who freed the slaves, wasn’t it? And yet how many of the descendants of those freed slaves are today Republicans? They seem to follow standards in the Democratic line as though Democrats were, in truth, their “pied pipers of Hamlin” who piped them to freedom. They seem to have rejected their sacred antecedents. How would Lincoln get along with Obama-would they both be feeding from the same political trough? Abe’s first determination was to hold the Union together, and he might be a little chagrined at what’s left of that “Union” today.

I think that those Southerners who matured into Southern Conservative Democrats embodied the spirit of Lincolnism more than did the Liberals that FDR’s later Democrats espoused. The “dole” and the “give-away” were not demanded in the old Dixie Conservative grab-bag.

Change may be the way of life – as the French say – but change surely does not always follow a logical order.

In 1933, at age 12, I did not like FDR, for he represented to me flaccid moral principles that I had been taught to distrust as a child. I understood even then that nothing worthwhile is supposed to be parceled out to those who do not put in a full measure of effort in return.

Pretty soon FDR had established “unemployment,” and people were being paid for “doing nothing.” This idea caught on merrily, and soon we had an Army of unemployed who stood in line to collect money from Uncle Sam. A big family on unemployment could collect enough so that working could seem a stupid alternative indeed, and, in some cases, salaries needed to rise in order to get the well-paid unemployed to take a job at all.

“Getting something for nothing” became for the first time a primary attraction of American political philosophy, and candidates assured themselves of millions of votes simply by offering pay for no work – a ploy which is so productive it is not likely to be overthrown when dealing with future problems.

FDR’s give-away “New Deal” disastrously attenuated the fiber of the American national character. We were headed nowhere but downward when one of those terrible things happened which brings simultaneous good with it: On December 7, 1941, the Japanese mounted a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. We soon had 10 million in uniform and were fully employed in factories to beat the Japanese, and later, the Germans.

After the war, American ex-GI’s welcomed the deserved earned benefits of the GI Bill for additional education, VA housing, and off we went …

Presently, many of us think that our “rights” still include government assistance with: education, health care, child care, housing, mortgages, food, jobs, etc. Let’s be “fair” – cradle to grave help – what a grand idea!

Don’t work, don’t think, just exist – the government will take care of you – just vote the right way …

What a wonderful life! …

About Roney: Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF 2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award (Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)