The Reagan Revolution in the U.S. is nearly complete. All thatremains to do is gut Social Security and then make asmall change in the U.S. Constitution — just remove “We thepeople” and add “Hooray for me and screw you.”

It’s not as flippant an idea as you might think.

In a town just south of Boston, on the day after the1980 American presidential election, my grandfatherand I sat at the kitchen table eating breakfast.Sometime between buttering my toast and drinking myorange juice, I asked my grandfather to explain thepolitical philosophy of president-elect Ronald Reagan.

“That’s easy,” he answered, “Hooray for me, and screwyou.”

I was relatively young at the time, and his commentstruck me as terribly sharp. After all, Republicans orDemocrats, we were all Americans, all committed to thefundamental principle of “We the people.” Or so Ithought at the time.

I figured my grandfather was disappointed that JimmyCarter had lost, and that the election of RonaldReagan meant the rise of “trickle-down” economics(“Pissing down economics,” he later grumbled). And Iknew, too, that my grandfather believed Ronald Reaganhad betrayed his generation and a solemn socialcontract with Americans forged nearly 40 yearsbefore by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I wondered if my grandfather’s politics had justpassed with the times. After all, his politics wereshaped by historical experiences mostly forgotten bythe post World War II generation. He came of age during theDepression, riding the rails in the early 1930slooking for work. Later, during World War II, he fought forreal liberty and freedom, sailing with the MerchantMarine (he was 4-F because of his poor eyesight). Heopposed McCarthyism in the 1950s, Vietnam and Nixon inthe 1960s and 70s. And I still remember, in 1976, hisdeep felt hope for America in the honesty, decencyand humanism of Jimmy Carter.

Interestingly, my grandfather was not politically aDemocrat. Rather his politics embraced something morebasic: he simply cared about the American people — allof them. He believed deeply in the first words of theU.S. Constitution: “We the people.” But by 1980,politics reflected the ideas of a new generation. Andmy grandfather suddenly seemed old.

“Remember,” my grandfather often reminded me after1980, “you take care of your own.” It was a messagethat I never forgot. He was still fighting that fight,in the middle of Reagan’s Revolution, when he died inMay of 1985.

Why share his story now?

Well, after nearly 25 years, I find myselfremembering my grandfather’s blunt assessment ofReagan’s politics as Reagan’s philosophical son,George W. Bush, begins his ideological attack onSocial Security. I say “ideological” because the Bushattack on Social Security is not just a“think-outside-the-box” idea for protecting “We thepeople.” It’s something far deeper and darker.

Already the Bush administration has brought a WMD-likefervour to their “concerns” about Social Security. Thecrisis in the program, they say, is large and looming,and the program’s collapse is imminent. And as withthe Iraqi WMD public relations campaign, Americans arebeing inundated with facts and figures and dazzlingstatistics to prove that the Social Security system isfast going bust.

And surprisingly — or perhaps not so surprisingly -some prominent Democrats agree. Time magazinecolumnist and former Clinton adviser Joe Klein, forone, thinks privatizing Social Security has merit.Like Bush, Klein sees a cataclysmic future forpublicly funded Social Security. And also like Bush,he looks to the “success” of the Chilean and Swedishprivatized retirement programs as models for Americato imitate. But Klein and others on the Democraticside who share the Bush vision about Social Securityare missing the larger ideological attack under way.

By privatizing Social Security, what the Bushadministration is proposing is nothing less than arevolutionary shift in the American commitment to “Wethe people.” The proposed changes mean Americans willno longer be obliged to take care of their own: oftheir elderly, of their weak, of their downtrodden.

For a Republican Party whose supporters include somany Christian fundamentalists, one wonders: where, inBush’s privatization plan, is the Christian ideal ofbeing one’s brother’s keeper? The irony, of course, isthat this ideal is already informing theexisting Social Security system introduced by FranklinD. Roosevelt: that working Americans invest their taxdollars to ensure the safe retirement of those whocame before them, that each generation will care forthe next.

In this final stage of the Reagan Revolution, “We”becomes “Me.” The “Freedom” and “Liberty” thatPresident George W. Bush plans to export to the worldare simply the new brand names for 21st century socialDarwinism — a ruthless, extreme, acquisitiveindividualism.

Or better yet: Hooray for me, and screw you.