Carlson, Allan, in {Persuasion at Work}, 1985/October, pub. Rockford Institute, on the marginalization of old people, quoted in WSJ (1985/12/16), p. 26,
"Modern liberalism, we now can see, works to break up traditional forms of community and to transform the resulting pieces into victim classes beholden to government for their sustenance and security.
A primary example of this process has been the treatment accorded the old.
… Modern liberalism’s difficulty in coping with the aged derived from its very premises.
In traditional societies, the old are revered
as leaders or priests of their religion,
as defenders of inherited culture,
as interpreters of social order,
as judges of the normal and deviant,
as revered, past-oriented guides to the future.
Among modern American liberals, though, such roles have been distrusted.
Unbound by a consistent religious metaphysics, suspicious of cultural expectations that violate the guiding principles of efficiency and equality, contemptuous of the irrational aspects of the past, and dedicated to freedom from social restraints as an end in itself, modern liberals have worked to disenfranchise the old from their traditional roles, to turn the aged into hollow shells.
Unwilling, then, to admit their own responsibility for transforming the old into marginal people, these same ideologues have necessarily turned the charge around and have blamed this development on “society'’ or “capitalism.'’ "
what does radical mean?