Thomas Paine sounds off…again:
Self-reliance has a long American pedigree with roots in the first permanent English settlement in North America, Jamestown. Not long after landing in the New World in 1607, the intrepid colonists began dying like flies. Captain John Smith recognized that only a supreme effort by everyone would guarantee the survival of the community. Smith, a master motivator, laid down the law: if a man will not work, neither shall he eat. The English gentlemen in the company, who up to that point hadn’t put in a minute’s worth of manual labor, suddenly developed a liking for work. Against formidable odds, Jamestown survived and American individualism was born.
For centuries Americans carried on the tradition of Jamestown. People supported themselves, provided for their families, and solved their own problems. Americans instinctively knew that they bore the responsibility for their destiny, a core value that unfair adversity didn’t alter. When natural disaster struck, for instance, residents of local communities worked together to rescue the living, bury the dead, and rebuild their towns and lives. Virtually no one looked to the government for anything. Private citizens took charge and fixed what was broken.
Welfare did exist in America in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Privately financed and adhering to strict rules for dispensing aid, relief societies did a much better job of helping the needy than government does today. Aid associations would only help the “worthy poor,” folks who were broke through no fault of their own. Drunks and lazy stiffs need not apply. Moreover, money wasn’t just doled out, but the poor were helped in ways that promoted their ability to become self-sufficient as soon as possible. For instance, 5,000 sowing machines were given to seamstresses whose equipment was lost in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. The one-time gift helped these ladies get back on their feet, and they in turn manufactured much needed clothing for city residents who had lost everything. Back in the day, welfare worked.
With the New Deal, government for the first time stuck its nose into what had been an exclusively private domain. FDR’s programs did not abandon the concept of the worthy poor, but government aid did replace private efficiency and intimacy with bureaucratic waste and disconnection. Much worse, the New Deal began to train Americans to look to government for help when the going got rough. Strike one.
President Johnson’s Great Society programs abandoned the concept of the worthy poor, opting instead to address “structural poverty.” According to this view, Americans who were poor were invariably victims of an unfair and often racist system. To right this wrong, Johnson’s War on Poverty established a single criteria for government aid workers to follow: income. Americans below a certain income level, regardless of all other factors, qualified to belly up to the government trough. If the New Deal represented a pin hole in the American resolve to be self-reliant, the Great Society punched a gaping gash in the edifice of individualism and personal responsibility. Strike two.
Fast-forward 55 years and the results of government giveaways are painful to behold. Millions of Americans are perpetually on the dole, looking to government for help in every area of life. The black two-parent family has been virtually destroyed, especially in the inner cities where members of the Underclass dwell. 31 million Americans receive food stamps. Over half of all public school K-12 students receive at least one meal every school day thanks to the American taxpayer. Millions of Americans limit their income (one way or another) in order to qualify for SCHIP or housing allowances or you-name-it. Where private charity aimed at restoring the poor to self-reliance, public welfare does just the opposite.
Nowadays, Americans look to government first, and not only when things go wrong. Parents bare children with tax and welfare benefits in mind. Moms and Dads of toddlers are already scheming to get government to pay for the kids’ college education. And so on and so forth. The lower half of American wage earners pay almost nothing in taxes, yet collect tens of thousands of dollars every year in government benefits. No wonder they vote for the politician promising the most handouts. The pride of Jamestown is not dead in America, but it’s taking a beating every day.
Strike three will be President Obama’s as yet unnamed vision for America. Expanded welfare of every type, nationalized healthcare, cap-and-trade foolishness, and aggressive redistribution of wealth — all paid for with $20 trillion of debt – will close the book on what made America, and Americans, great. The entitlement mentality will destroy America more certainly than terrorists or nuclear bombs.
This American is ashamed that so many fellow-citizens quickly discard their pride and self-esteem for a piece of bread. There was a time in this country when men were ashamed to receive government aid. Like the Model T, those days are long gone. I feel like Pericles, the great Greek who lived through the glory days of Athens only to see her sudden and awful demise. America’s downhill slide will take longer, but after the umpire says “strike three,” there is only one place to go. In baseball it’s called the dugout. In America it would be properly called ”the road to serfdom.” Jamestown, we barely knew you.
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Obama Presidency, Video, Welfare