I was raised by my hard-working immigrant parents in a Brooklyn, two bedroom, one bath apartment shared by five. No automobile, clothes were washed in the bathtub and the phone was located in Weinstein’s drug store down the block. My brother and I never complained, got educations and became professionals. And as many of my Jewish brethren around the country, through the years, we prospered and outgrew our traditional, lower economic surroundings and attitudes. We had homes, cars, traveled and our humble beginnings thankfully faded away.

We also matured politically, chucking our socialist upbringings out the window and taking advantage of the wonderful opportunities this great country offered us: the reason, of course, that our parents came here in the first place! So why are so many who were brought up as we were and now, today living in prosperity, still mired in the “one bathroom” political mentality in which they were raised? Their origins of the Lower East Side and Brownsville have long since faded from their memories. Are they or their kids still operating sewing machines in the garment district? Are they earning livings driving cabs or trucks, selling door to door, packing cartons or stocking shelves as in the days of yore? No way! They have stormed into the upper middle class strata based on their drive, intelligence and fortitude. And the government had very little to do with their success.

My question then, is why are they for higher taxes, the reduction our defenses and clamoring for the redistribution of (their) income? Why are they in support of a president who castigates the  system that gave them the incredible opportunity to thrive in ways that their parents could have only dreamed? What reasons do they have for supporting the denigration of individual accomplishment? Most of them, in a wink, will tell you of their kids’ financial prosperity, successes and achievements, encouraged and prodded by this free, capitalistic, competitive society. So why do they yearn and vote for the return to their lives of yesteryear? It makes no sense to me for I refuse to even consider going back to that pathetic Brooklyn mentality even as much as I refuse to go back to my “Roosevelt” days.