Perhaps a major reason for the widespread repudiation of President Clinton's New Democrats and the embrace of what Republicans call Contract With America is the same reason many of our forebears came here in the first place, and why new immigrants keep coming.
Our ancestors came to get away from the stranglehold of British rule in the 17th century, (and to overthrow it here in the 18th century), to escape from upheaval and oppression in 19th-century Europe, or to escape from more recent totalitarian rule and poverty in Nazi Germany, Eastern Europe and countless countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America throughout this century.
Most of them came to get away from a big, bloated government running their lives and telling them what to do. Nor did opening up the American West attract people eager either for government help or direction.
The Depression of the Thirties and the huge number (15 million) of people out of work with no safety net forced the federal government to take a greater part in people's lives, to create jobs, to provide temporary relief and, in 1935, to help wage earners put aside a little something for their old age: Social Security.
The idea of FDR's New Deal, of Truman's Fair Deal, of Lyndon Johnson's War Against Poverty was to help people feed, clothe and house themselves. Medicare -- medical insurance for those over 65 -- was passed in 1965. Numerous other measures were passed, creating a web of welfare, with a bureaucracy to match.
But something unforeseen happened as a result of those high-minded exercises; people became dependent on government aid and control. Assistance became entitlement and suffocated some of our self-reliance along with some of our beloved independence. According to economist Milton Friedman, government now controls about 50 percent of our gross national product.
Whether there is a connection between the fact that the ancestors of 37 percent of the people who chronically receive welfare through Aid To Families With Dependent Children did not come here to escape totalitarian rule but were brought here as slaves is most problematic. Slavery and the second-class citizenship that followed for so many is not conducive to developing self-reliance and independence.
A signal of the congressional elections of 1994 is that many voters don't think they're getting enough for their high taxes and feel they're paying the expenses of people who aren't doing their share. The outcomes of the recent elections suggest that people want to retrieve what they can of their nation's past and early intentions.
There's an ironic echo to the words of some prominent Republicans. Newt Gingrich, of all people, sounds like FDR, who, early in his "Hundred Days," said, "Take a method and try it. If it fails, try another. But above all, try something." Representative Gingrich and his people are going to have to try some careful thought and sensitive restraint to implement their "revolution." They're going to have to make their measures, including fostering self-reliance, attractive to more than the ancestors of people who chose to come here. Their slogan, after all, is Contract With America -- all of it, not part.
Ann Egerton is a Baltimore writer.