Answer:

The country is being led by a group of ideologues who fanatically reject the notion that government has a role to play in ameliorating the harshest aspects of capitalism.

For them, the mantra is "privatization," in any and all corners of society.

In fact, what the president advocates, and what powerful Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan seems to be endorsing, is a return to the purist free-market fantasy that characterized the latter's outlook as a young libertarian academic.

... This ideological hostility to progressive taxation and income redistributions is the real issue behind the assault on Social Security, and it deserves to be debated head-on.

Knowing that the program is far too popular to be axed completely, hyper-conservatives hatched this idea of diverting its funds into the stock market. They hate the idea of all that money flowing down the food chain instead of up   lower- income workers get a higher rate of return on their Social Security taxes than those better off.

Social Security-funded private accounts, on the other hand, would not redistribute income; they simply would extend into retirement the existing decades-old pattern of the rich getting richer, the poor doing worse and the middle class eroding.

Let's be blunt: A progressive tax is a good thing for the very reason libertarian and conservative ideologues think it is bad: It redistributes income in a way that ever so slightly makes us more equal and minimally protects the weakest among us.

Anybody who wants a democratic society cannot accept excessively uneven income distribution. As Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed, the rule of the majority must be rooted in a thriving middle class.

The alternative? Class warfare and socioeconomic chaos   exactly what we faced during the Depression when Social Security was introduced to save capitalism.

Question:

Social Security Ain't Broke, so Bush Is Obsessed With Fixing It
He hates government programs no matter how much good they do.
Robert Scheer
March 8, 2005

The problem with Social Security is that it isn't broken, which is precisely why the president is so eager to destroy it. It is the continued success, rather than failure, of the program that irks him.

As George W. Bush continues to flail at Social Security, even in the face of increased public opposition, you have to wonder: "Why?"