Your thoughts, please.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - On American values - Column

Since I finished my book on Lyndon Baines Johnson last year, I've been thinking about my next book. Two ideas have emerged. One would be a new edition of How Washington Really Works. The most recent appeared in 1993, so considerable revision is needed. The other book would describe how values have changed between the era during which I grew up-the 1930s and '40s--and today.

Recently, I have been surprised to find that the two subjects are merging in my mind. Bear with me while I try to explain.

In the 1930s and '40s there were a lot of bad guys, just as there are today. Lynching still took place. Father Coughlin could preach hatred of the Jews. But getting rich was not the dominating motivation that it is now. And on the whole, there was a generous willingness to share that existed in considerably greater measure than it does today.

Almost everyone I have known who lived through the era remembers their mothers unfailingly feeding the often ragged and almost always hungry men who would come to the back door. The same generosity led them to support New Deal programs like the CCC and the WPA that helped give the needy a leg up. The government that provided these programs was respected by most of us, and the willingness to share extended to sharing society's burdens. In 1940 both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, FDR and Wendell Willkie, and, according to public opinion polls, a majority of the American people, supported the first peacetime draft in our history. As did a majority in both houses of Congress.

For the next twenty-five years, the willingness to serve would be shared by all classes. And a willingness to share the cost of government was best illustrated when the Republican Willkie criticized FDR in 1943 for not raising taxes enough as Roosevelt was on his way to setting the top rate at 90 percent. Roosevelt even proposed to limit wartime incomes to $25,000.

Of course, there were still Republicans who railed against taxes of any kind. The great humorist of the age, Will Rogers, observed, "I really believe if it came to a vote whether to go to war with England, France, and Germany combined, or raise the rate on incomes of over $100,00, [the Republicans] would vote [for] war."

But the fact is that back then, there were moderate Republicans like Willkie. Reasonable men in the middle of both the House and Senate could compromise. The filibuster was rarely used for anything other than the protection of racial...