To the editor:

In a recent rare moment of candor and cognitive lucidity, the current occupant of the White House proclaimed what he really thinks of the citizens he purports to lead by caricaturing us as voters who are “just trying to figure out how to take care of their family, put three squares on the table, stay safe, able to pay their mortgage or their rent, et cetera.”

This patronizing pronouncement reveals Mr. Biden’s low expectations for the strong citizens who are the nation’s backbone and his patrician contempt for the aspirations of the plebeians who live, work, play and strive to achieve their dreams in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Those dreams are to excel and thrive, not merely survive. That is the American spirit — indeed, the human spirit.

Three squares and staying safe may be the best that many people around the world can hope for — people who live in squalor, under the iron boot of immoral rulers who deny individual liberty, crush creativity and innovation, and punish the free expression of ideas.

I’ve been to some of those places. I’ve seen crude cardboard shacks with roofs of scrap pieces of tin held down by rocks in Liberia, West Africa. I’ve heard Liberian men tearfully tell of friends and family members whose hands and arms were brutally amputated by machete simply because they belonged to the wrong tribe. I’ve watched drably dressed proletarian comrades dutifully waiting in line to buy brown-paper-wrapped basic necessities from nearly empty shelves in communist Bulgaria.

Cubans do not set out on makeshift rafts, float through shark-infested waters and land on freedom’s shore merely for the promise of three squares. Tens of thousands of people from Central America do not flood our southern border merely for three squares. No, they want more. They risk everything to knock on the door of liberty and opportunity for themselves and their children.

Mr. Biden, you can have your three squares, safety and the mortgage payment. Those are baseline starting points that any reasonably competent government should be able to secure for its citizens. Those are givens. I want more –much more.

I want the freedom to start my own business, savor the exhilarating taste of success, profit from the fruits of my labor and make as much money as possible so I can provide the best jobs and benefits for others, give to charitable organizations of my choosing and create my own philanthropic initiatives.

I want your money-grubbing hand out of my pocket so you can shamelessly waste less of the tax money you confiscate and I can spend more of it on goals and needs that are important to me and my community.

I want parents to be able to choose the best educational environments for their children so they will have abundant opportunities to provide for their own families, contribute meaningfully to society, and lead lives of extraordinary achievement and personal fulfillment.

I want to read, travel and explore the world. I want to ask questions, critique ideas and consider multiple points of view without my government arrogantly classifying those perspectives as “misinformation.” I want to have civil conversation and constructive dialogue with fellow citizens who do not share my worldview and political ideology.

I want to play music, write poetry, watch baseball games and teach my grandchildren how to cast a flyrod and tie flies to catch brilliantly hued native brook trout in frigid mountain streams. I want to walk with them through summer’s morning dew in sopping wet shoes to pick home-grown blackberries and then feast on heaping mounds of blackberry cobbler and homemade ice cream on the porch in the company of good friends.

I want to practice my personal faith and attend a house of worship regularly. I want to respect, interact with, and learn from others who choose not to lead lives of faith.

I want to sit by a blazing fire in the cool of the evening, smell the freshly cut hay and the pig farm upwind, hold my wife’s hand and talk about our goals and dreams for tomorrow, the next day and the years ahead.

I want to mow my lawn and do my own landscaping because I thrive on the physical exertion and artistic expression. Sometimes, Mr. Biden, I get so caught up in these creative pursuits, I forget myself and go without one or two of your “squares.”

One thousand different Americans will have one thousand different dreams, and none of them need to be like mine. But all of them will reflect the will to reach farther than our present grasp, to stretch ourselves to attain the broadest range of human experience and fulfillment possible within our diverse individual aptitudes and circumstances.

As you are wont to quip, Mr. Biden, “here’s the thing”: Life — American life — is more than three squares, basic safety and the monthly mortgage. Our nation’s founders did not risk their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to bequeath three squares and a rent payment to posterity. Come on, man! If you don’t understand that by now after nearly half a century of feeding at the government trough, then get out of the way, step aside, get your government off our backs and watch us prosper through our own grit, determination and indomitable human spirit.

Three squares await you, Mr. Biden, back home in Wilmington or Scranton or wherever it is you claim to come from. You can have all three of them and a nap in your basement. We want more.

Kevin Zook

Lewistown