Editor's view of our past is too narrow

Editor Frank Miele in a recent “2 Cents” column regrets that today’s America is not the one he grew up in that inspired Martin Luther King, John Kennedy and the one that honored George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

My impression of those days is quite different. I remember bringing home groceries and welfare milk (worse than skim milk) from the local fire station courtesy of the government to help us poor families during the Great Depression. I remember the 40 percent unemployed who rode the rails to find work, including my father. I remember the stories from my Irish great-grandparents about the discrimination of Irish immigrants relegated to the ghettos of Boston and New York and told not to apply for work. I remember the madman in Europe who tried to conquer the world and exterminate the Jews. I remember the forced internment of loyal Asian-American’s during World War II. I remember the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. because he led the opposition to racist Gov. George Wallace of Alabama who unleashed attack dogs on black school children trying to attend the local segregated school.

I remember the assassination of President Kennedy and later of his presidential candidate brother Bobby Kennedy. Those were shameful days and not inspiring days in our history. Mr. Miele writes of honoring our founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as statesman and rightfully so. However he omits their condoning the importation of thousands of African-Americans in hell-hole slave ships so they could toil away on Washington’s and Jefferson’s estates.

I also remember the days before Social Security and Medicare when millions of our elderly died in abject poverty, many because they couldn’t afford medical care. So to the naysayers like Frank Miele, Mike Donohue, Mark Agather and others who parrot the same doomsday statements of those who opposed Social Security and Medicare in the past (recall Father Coughlin), I suggest they name a country with less big government and socialism than the U.S.

Apparently they think the whole world is headed for Armageddon. In my case I’m happy my 45 years plus working 60-hour weeks many times are behind me and am enjoying retirement and benefits of Medicare, Social Security, veterans health care and pensions. I might even be inclined which I’m not, to invest in the shadowy world of personal bank accounts, tax avoidance and so called wealth management.

The America of today no doubt in many cases deserves constructive criticism, but it is the America I love and not necessarily the one I grew up in and the one Mr. Miele would take us back to.

Breen is a resident of Kalispell