Welfare... Should it exist?

[Jerry Falwell]

In years past, before the welfare system that we use today was ever thought up, it was the responsibility of the Church to take care of the lame, poor, and widows. I don't feel that it should be the gov't who has to take care of all of these people. Just food for thought. Any comments welcome.

[Mezro]

No.

Mezro...go the fuck out and work you lazy assholes...

[Jerry Falwell]

Here's a little perspective from someone who used and abused the welfare system and has written a book about it...


Book Review
The New Slavery

American blacks are still in chains, a black author argues—but today's chains were forged by liberalism and the welfare state.

by Matt Kaufman

Longtime Citizen readers may remember the name Star Parker. And not just because it's the sort of name you don't hear every day.

Back in May 1996, Citizen ran an article on the emergence of black conservatives. Parker stood out in the crowd, simply because her story was so remarkable: She'd broken away from a life of drug abuse, promiscuity (she had multiple abortions) and welfare dependence to become a Christian, an entrepreneur (magazine publisher), a talk-show hostess and a vocal champion of traditional values.

She's still at it nearly a decade later. Only now she's finding a bigger audience, including the audience for her recent book Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It (WND Books, 2003; 230 pages).

As you might gather from the title, Parker doesn't mince words. She's brutally honest about what she thinks people need to hear. And she's got credibility when she does it, because she's also brutally honest about herself.

In high school, she started as a petty thief, then escalated to burglary and (once) armed robbery of a liquor store. She didn't get caught, but got scared out of a life of crime—only, as a young adult, to take up the habits of sex and drugs.

My days typically began at noon, just in time to watch my soap operas. Afterwards, I would thumb a ride, smoke pot, and roller-skate half-nude at Venice Beach until evening. Then I would dance at the local disco until last call, before leaving with some strange man. For income I would work odd jobs, take a couple classes at the city college to get free grant money, or get pregnant and collect a few welfare checks, then have an abortion a couple months later.

Through all this, Parker also stayed in a habit she'd had for a long time: laziness. From childhood, "I simply refused to work hard," she says. "I blamed racism, my parents, and any other excuse society would allow me to use for my laziness." When she learned she could collect even more welfare money by getting pregnant and keeping her baby, she felt like she'd won the lottery. "I had been looking for a legal way to finance my laziness," she wrote. "Now at 23, I had finally found a source of income that did not require work."

Parker was embarking on a road already far too well-traveled by others in the inner city. The story of how she got off that road is told in her book, and it's well worth reading at greater length than can be reproduced here. In brief, she met black Christians who befriended her but also confronted her with a message she couldn't ignore: "My lifestyle was unacceptable—to God."

Finally, sitting in church as a 26-year-old single mother, Parker found herself convicted—thanks to a straight-shooting pastor who also didn't mind being confrontational. "What are you doing living on welfare?" he asked the 4,000 people assembled. "God is your source, not the government!"

Before the pastor could finish his sermon, my heart was stirring with the desire to find real purpose and meaning for my life. For the first time I felt a sense of personal responsibility for the choices I had made and would make.

Personal responsibility: Seems pretty basic, doesn't it? But only to those of us who've grown up with the concept. That's why Parker has made it her mission in life to take the message of personal responsibility into places where it's been stifled.

And that can take some guts: It means being ostracized, and called a traitor to her own people. She recalls being part of an Oprah debate on welfare reform, where she found herself alone against five other guests, plus Oprah herself, all campaigning for ever more government programs. Forced to shout "in order to get a full sentence heard," she found the process utterly frustrating. "How," she wonders, "do I explain to the queen of television talk, the epitome of rags to riches herself, that the answer to poverty is freedom and personal responsibility—not the welfare state!"

Again and again Parker tells similar anecdotes about black leaders, both named (Jesse Jackson comes up a few times) and unnamed, who simply didn't want to hear about anything except racism and the need for more money from Washington. She recalls a debate on school choice with "a nationally known minister I knew and respected" who told her flat-out, "Anything rich white Republicans are for, I am against." Parker's unsparing assessment: "Men and women like this minister and his willing accomplices in the liberal establishment are involved in the slave trade, as surely as if they had put the chains on the people themselves."

When Parker invokes slavery, she doesn't mean it as hype. She thinks that's precisely the word to describe the state of utter dependency on government to which her people have been subjected. And what galls her most about it is that today's slavery came about not from coercion, but from seduction.

To be sure, she stresses, welfare statists (a.k.a. "poverty pimps") pushed their programs hard, doling out bribes with hefty amounts of "other people's money." But her people took the bribes, and worse, came to see them as entitlements. They abandoned their work ethic. (Black kids who study, she reminds us, are denounced for "acting white.") They abandoned their families. And in a real way, they even abandoned their faith—believing that "the answers lie in government subsidies or reliance on community."

But Parker refuses to accept this state of affairs as the last word, an obituary for black America: Besides chronicling history, she's calling on her audience to change it. Her book is full of praise for Christian morality, loyal families and free enterprise. She knows these things can work. Indeed, they're working right now, she notes—citing (among other things) a Census Bureau report that more than half of black married families have incomes of $50,000 or more.

How can more black Americans break the chains of dependence? Parker's got plenty of ideas. Some of them involve adding public policies (tax cuts, vouchers, enterprise zones). Some involve abolishing public policies. (Of affirmative action, she says, "End it, don't mend it.") Some involve rejecting public policies. (She opposes government funding faith-based programs, fearing the recipients of the grants will themselves be sucked into dependency on the state.) Some involve private-enterprise policies. (Churches have got to get more involved.)

But mainly her ideas involve attitude adjustments, which anyone can begin making any time they choose. In her summary:

The hope of the poor is not found on Uncle Sam's plantation. It's found in an attitude change, one that is optimistic and forward-looking. Hope is found in strong moral and ethical standards. Hope is found in knowing our history and not allowing poverty pimps to manipulate our past to their benefit. Hope is found in genuine charity and in durable marriages and families. Hope is found in people exercising their God-given talents in the marketplace, unencumbered by excessive taxes and regulations. Hope is found in the free movement of capital and in ridding our land of poisonous ideas such as multiculturalism, and scrapping failed programs, such as our current welfare system. More than those, however, hope is found in the hearts of any and every American who makes the conscious decision to leave poverty and strive for something better.

It can be done, and if we are to live up to the potential and promise of this nation, it must be done.

[Mezro]

Mezro...all it takes is effort...not excuses...people need to stand up and do the right thing...not sit around and live off of the hard work of others...

[DrMaddVibe]

NO!

[Jerry Falwell]

How about you Ford? You have suggested in other posts that you are a man of faith that knows the word. I am curious how you feel about this subject, since your political stance and religious affiliation would be at odds on this one.

[BITEYOASS]

Fuck it, welfare should end both for the poor, schools, giant corporations, Haliburton and churches. That's just a Libertarian stance I approve of. Just end this large government infrastructure and let the private sector and state governments take care of it.

[FORD]

Originally posted by Jerry Falwell
How about you Ford? You have suggested in other posts that you are a man of faith that knows the word. I am curious how you feel about this subject, since your political stance and religious affiliation would be at odds on this one.

I believe every person physically capable of working should do so.

The main problem with the welfare system as it exists is that those on welfare also get subsidized medical care, and food stamps. Yet if they go off welfare into a low wage job (not many people go from welfare to a decent salary) then they are no longer eligible for food stamps or the subsidized health care.

For this reason, many people, especially those with children are more or less forced to choose welfare because the alternative isn't realistic.

Churches and other entities such as food banks helping out are a great idea, but the health care (and child care, for that matter) are very real issues. And churches can't do health care.

[twonabomber]

sure, let the church support them. since i don't go to church, it won't cost me a dime.

[Nickdfresh]

Golly. I wonder what's cheaper:

A.) Sticking people on welfare roles.

B.) Educating them to a universal standard enjoyed by suburban, mostly white schools.

C.) Putting them in prison when they come into your neighborhoods hungry and angry.

The answer is A. Truth is, I hate the welfare-state system too, but that's pretty easy thing to say. It's like saying you hate taxes, or you hate not getting laid, or paying $3 a gallon for gas. But does anybody with an IQ above 60 think that the churches are going preserve any kind of social order by preventing poverty? Churches in poor areas are poor too. You're going to pay one way or another...

[Big Train]

I very much agree with Nick. It isn't so much about anything other than finding a way to NOT have to deal with them. Getting them by is good enough.

However, I do agree with Mezro as well. Hard work is the ONLY true response. Opportunity and hard work, end of story.

[DLR'sCock]

Get rid of corporate welfare...

[FORD]

Absolutely on the corproate welfare.

Also consider how many BILLIONS are WASTED, yes WASTED on Defense BULLSHIT.

No other military, including China, spends even a fraction of the money on "defense" as the US does under the BCE.

And other than China, I don't think we have a goddamn thing to worry about, as far as anyone else having a large military.

Welfare, even including corporate welfare, isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to the money STOLEN by thieves such as Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater and the BCE themselves under the excuse of "defense". In this current case from an "enemy" that is 98% pure fiction.

[Jerry Falwell]

As bad as this may sound, even though I am a young person (compared to most of you, lol), I am very old school. I personally feel that welfare is nothing but a crutch. It's not realistic to just take it away and let thousands die of starvation, but I feel it is realistic to lose welfare privaleges over time. Does it really take more than three months to find a job that pays well enough to put food on the table. Heck, for that matter, two or three jobs if need be. I also agree with you Ford (I know I will probably NEVER say that again) about the whole health care issue. I don't know how to fix the problem, or if there is a humane answer. Maybe this is natures way of letting us know that fight or flight is legit. You don't work, you don't eat.... Play the hand your dealt... and on and on.
I just don't feel like the general public should have to pay for a system that seems as corrupt or easily frauded as any in the U.S. (besides the IRS).

[UGS]

It used to piss me right off when some people I used know would run out and buy new snowmobiles and dirt bikes, all while still being on welfare. I'm just thinking "fuck you buddy, I own that thing more than you do . . . I PAID FOR IT . . .get a fucking job"

I know Canada has a different system from the US, but it's that same "if i can get it for free, why work?" mentality all over