President Kennedy’s proposal to extend Social Security to cover medical care for the elderly represented an opening wedge to a government takeover of “every area of freedom as we have known in this country,” predicting that if it were passed, “we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.” Reagan was fired from his job of hosting General Electric Theater in part for so prominently advocating this radical position.
