A Modest Proposal

I borrow my title from Jonathan Swift, who was writing about the problem of starvation in eighteenth-century Ireland. Swift’s proposal for solving the problem, considered one of the best examples of irony in English literature, was for the starving Irish to solve the problem of starvation by boiling and eating their babies. Swift’s proposal was, of course, anything but modest. It was also satire—educated people of the time were not expected to take it seriously. Today’s Republican Party, however, has been proposing actions, while not as horrific as boiling and eating babies, would foster almost as much misery for the . . . → Read More: A Modest Proposal