The Republicans are trying to destroy Social Security. The Republicans think it's okay if your grandparents suffer in poverty. In fact, they can not only morally countenance grannies forced to live off of dog food because they haven't invested properly, they think it's justice. The Republicans voted against Social Security in the 30s and they've been trying to destroy it ever since.

They've spent decades convincing everyone who pays into SS that it's in crisis and will be destroyed before they will ever get benefits.

Yes, these words are meant to scare people into opposing the Republican plan to incrementally privatize social security. But these words have the benefit of being true.

The Republican Party hates Social Security for a number of reasons, and chief among them is that it hates "the government." Well, the Republicans run the government, so what does this mean? Also, Republicans have no problem with agricultural subsidies, congressional pork, or corporate subsidies and bailouts. So again, what does it mean?

The Republican Party thinks that the government ought not be in the charity business. I mean, sure, getting their friends and friends of friends juicy defense contracts is one thing, but that's rewarding achievement, or something.

People say this, and it's true, that Social Security is the prototypical Big Government project, and people like it. That's why George Bush wants to turn it from a functioning program into a ruinous mess. I may be giving them too much credit, but I think that might have something to do with the fact that their policies, in general, seem so universally incompetent. From this proposed policy, to NCLB, to the enormous Medicare bill, they design programs that don't actually make people's lives better and that cost an enormous amount of money.

Krugman sometimes says that the major intended upshot of Republican profligacy and bad government is an economic and fiscal crisis that makes junking the entire New Deal politically conceivable, that allows them to drown the government in a bathtub. Which would make these people both evil and stupid.

Hurting large numbers of people in order to serve one's rigid ideology is, pardon me, UnAmerican. That's something that Communists do, or fundamentalist Islamic terror groups. It's also deeply foolish. After all, where did the New Deal come from? It came out of the largest economic crisis of the 20th century, out of the failure of laissez faire republican economic policy. If Grover Norquist and the other proponents of 19th century economic order and social Darwinism think that people will be calling for a flat tax once we enter their Depression, they are sadly mistaken.