Frankly, I’m afraid that’s where we’re headed. I suppose it began back in the 30s when Roosevelt and Congress got together and created that alphabet soup of federal agencies. Ever since, Americans have grown more and more accustomed to Washington’s usurping individual responsibility. As a result, we have become a nation of brats. We whine when the price of gas goes up, and accept it as our birthright when it goes down. It’s as if we think we have a sacred right to pay the same price for fuel as our ancestors. In the meantime, without a squawk, we pay an arm and a leg for bottled water, $3.50 for a box of movie theatre popcorn, and of course we keep right on buying cars the size of Sherman tanks.

Like teenagers, we expect Uncle Sam to pay for all the essentials, such as health care and housing, while we blithely blow our allowances on such pricey toys as over- sized TVs and cable service, cell phones, DVD players, Nintendo games, and $125 sneakers for the kids.

We even have the attention span of children. We get into a war, and immediately demand to know when it will be over -- like little kids in the backseat incessantly asking if we’re there yet. Can you imagine anybody inquiring of FDR, in 1943, if he had a timetable for withdrawing from North Africa or Italy or Corregidor?

When a caller wanted me to explain how, without federal assistance, New Orleans could be expected to cope in the aftermath of Katrina, I said that catastrophic insurance might have helped. Or perhaps if the state or city had built stronger levees, the entire tragedy could have been avoided. In any case, other cities have managed to rebuild without the federal government staking out ever more turf. Chicago managed to come back from a holocaust, and San Francisco recovered nicely from its earthquake. I am for relying on private enterprise and the generosity of individual Americans. After all, the only money the feds have is what it takes from us. It’s not as if George Bush is writing a personal check on his Crawford account.

Honestly, I don’t know how our parents and grandparents, members of what has been labeled the Greatest Generation for the gallant way they dealt with the Depression and World War II, can stomach us. They have us over for Thanksgiving, and we’re bigger turkeys than the bird in the oven.

That’s what I should have said.