Oh I like that phrase so much!
I know, its annoying to see so many people diss Roosevelt's programs today w/o knowing just how desperate the situation was in the 1930's. Or in some cases, they know how bad it was b/c of Harding/Coolidge/Hoover but they try to avoid that part and just act like FDR and Truman proposed fixing problems for no reason.
What many upper-middle-class Americans - like most people on this board - fail to realize is that the reason they can afford to vote Republican is because of liberal Democratic policies.
For example, many of their parents and grandparents were educated via various government loans, subsides, the GI bill, etc., setting them on the road to higher incomes. The wage increases of those liberal years led to higher rates of home-ownership, the existence of the pension, etc. Basically nearly everyone was a poor before liberalism, and even though we are returning to that situation slowly but surely, the more fortunate recipients of State aid are still doing fairly well. Admittedly these are the people who 'did more' with what they got from liberal governance, but that doesn't change the fact that the seed of their well-being lay in welfare and redistribution, not in capitalist bootstrapping.
