In Lewis Carroll's book, ''Through the Looking Glass,'' the Queen of Hearts suddenly grabs Alice's hand and says, ''Now! Now! Faster! Faster!'' They run and run and run and run, and finally stop exhausted, only to find themselves in the very place they started.

Alice asks how that could happen, and the Queen of Hearts calls her a silly girl and tells her: ''Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!''

A radio newscaster reports that 30 years ago the average pay of a high school graduate was $24,000. Today it's $18,000.

The Queen of Hearts was right.

We have on our hands a Republican Congress fighting hard to return us to the days before Social Security, saying that programs developed 60 years ago are outdated and must be tossed aside.

And even as the words are coming out of the spokesman's mouth, I can't help but think of those much older documents, the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution.
If 60-year-old ideas are automatically tossable as creaky, worn and outdated, are those revered documents next on the Republican hit list?

We have the leading Republican Presidential contender, Bob Dole, proudly proclaiming that he fought Medicare 30 years ago because he knew it would never work.
We have a Republican spokesman on the Jim Lehrer Newshour stating flatly that welfare never helped a single child.

We have renewed efforts to declare a woman's womb government property, spearheaded by people who say they want government out of their private lives.
And I can't help but wonder if the entire country has stepped through the looking glass.

I believe that people voted in 1994 out of frustration over the imbalances and instabilities in their lives which they thought were caused by unfair governmental programs ranging from NAFTA to affirmative action. The people were crying for justice, economic as well as social.

The underlying flippancy with which those votes were cast was, ''After all, how much worse can it get?''

Now we know the answer to that question.

Sometimes it's strange how life imitates art, how a futuristic and purely fictional book can start playing itself out in our national arena. Remember ''Animal Farm,'' that George Orwell classic where the animals rise up, take over the plantation, and put the pigs in charge?

I've watched the sacred words the animals had painted on the barn change surreptitiously, overnight, and when no one was looking, from ''All animals are equal,'' to ''All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.''

I've noticed that ''No animal shall sleep in a bed'' is now ''No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.''

No child was ever helped by welfare? The leading Republican presidential contender thinks Medicare is a bad idea?

How long will it be before our new fearless leaders take from that bed the sheets no animal should sleep on, cut out a couple of eye-holes, and throw the sheets over their heads?

How long will it take for the rest of us to read the handwriting on the wall?