To critics of Social Security:

Can you be sure that your offspring can provide themselves with an income during the years that they are incapable of working for pay; to earn an income sufficient for their secure and healthy existence? Will they, then, be able to keep you from starving, or succumbing to an illness? Are they capable of successful “day trading”?

President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt that in some cases, our citizens can, with their consent and vote, profit by having our government take on and offer a cure for some problems we are incapable of handling ourselves.

President Roosevelt was a good man, a kind man, a thoughtful man, who had great faith in the product of our country's founding fathers: the Constitution and its Bill of Rights. The latter guarantees the “Civil Liberties of a Democracy.” It guarantees that if the majority of American citizens wish to provide a means for present, able working people and their employers to support retired members of an earlier generation, they may do so. This is the kind of move benevolent people would expect of a democracy.

In 1935, during our country's Great Depression, President Roosevelt was instrumental in the passage of the legislation leading to our present Social Security and Medicare and the end of the Depression.

I suppose one should expect to learn of a few self-centered individuals among us, who care little about America's disadvantaged, disregard our government and state laws, run red lights, exceed speed limits and, impolitely, tailgate.

I am pleased to learn that polls continue to indicate that the majority of our citizens wish to repair Social Security and Medicare, where needed, not destroy it?.

Edward H. Ramey

Fayetteville

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