Posted on 03/24/2014 6:27:30 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Ideology is as much about understanding the past as shaping the future. And conservatives tell themselves a story, a fairy tale really, about the past, about the way the world was and can be again under Republican policies. This story is about the way people were able to insure themselves against the risks inherent in modern life.
Back before the Great Society, before the New Deal, and even before the Progressive Era, things were better. Before government took on the role of providing social insurance, individuals and private charity did everything needed to insure people against the hardships of life; given the chance, they could do it again.
This vision has always been implicit in the conservative ascendancy. It existed in the 1980s, when President Reagan announced, “The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern,” and called for voluntarism to fill in the yawning gaps in the social safety net. It was made explicit in the 1990s, notably through Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion, a treatise hailed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and William Bennett, which argued that a purely private nineteenth-century system of charitable and voluntary organizations did a better job providing for the common good than the twentieth-century welfare state.
This idea is also the basis of Paul Ryan’s budget, which seeks to devolve and shrink the federal government at a rapid pace, lest the safety net turn “into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.” It’s what Utah Senator Mike Lee references when he says that the “alternative to big government is not small government” but instead “a voluntary civil society.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
It’s only a myth because half of the country (the lib half) is completely devoid of any charity.
Where to start?
Way back then, in the straw man day the author kicks over, people worked. And if they chose not to work, they got hungry. And if working people needed a little help for any reason, there was the family, and the neighbors, and the church. And the government didn’t take half of every working man’s paycheck.
Blah blah blah.
Some conservatives may be too rosy in their predictions about what private charity can achieve, but what liberals like the author fail to address is that WE ARE BROKE! All that government “help” is on borrowed money.
Safety net? A warm comfy home, utilities, reliable car, a tv, a phone, an internet account, clothing, medical care and plentiful food are all basic human rights. All Americans and undocumented residents are entitled to them whether they educate themselves, work for a living, steal for a living or just decide to sponge off the work of others. It’s guaranteed by the constitution. Right?
Yeah, these people need a “safety net”:
Congress will soon begin consideration of the renewal of the Farm Bill, which has been portrayed by big government politicians and lobbyists as a critical “safety net” for struggling small farmers.
According to the Heritage Foundation, however, much of the legislation’s massive taxpayer-funded agricultural subsidies will be pocketed by wealthy farm owners, including former President Jimmy Carter, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack, and the families of members of Congress currently serving on the House and Senate Agriculture Committees.
Unlike many other industries during the Obama presidency, farming has shown record-high income levels and record-low debt. Yet politicians in largely agricultural states, as well as big agriculture lobbyists, insist that taxpayers struggling in other private sectors fork over their earnings to extremely successful agribusinesses such as Carter’s Farms, Inc. of Plains, Georgia. Data collected by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) shows that the farm owned by former President Jimmy Carter and his family collected $272,288 in subsidy payments from 1995 through 2012.
So do these:
A couple who collected food stamps and other public assistance from Minnesota while living on a yacht in Florida were being sought on fraud charges, prosecutors said on Friday.
Colin Chisholm III and his wife, Andrea Chisholm, got more than $165,000 in public assistance between 2005 and 2012 before benefits were terminated, according to prosecutor Mike Freeman in Hennepin County, Minn.
The Chisholms bought a $1.2 million yacht, The Andrea Aras, in 2005 shortly after applying for welfare benefits, according to complaints against them. They have been accused of living on the yacht in the area of Palm Beach, Fla., for 28 months while lying about living in Minnesota.
Read more: http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/5811698-74/yacht-according-benefits#ixzz2ww1YBWfP
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Yeah - problem is that charitable people are more than happy to give a hand up to people that need it. However, they are not as kind to those who just want a handout (a k a the rat base).
Correct. My dad had it rough. His father died before my dad was born. His mother was struggling to raise three boys, in poverty during the 1920s. There was no other family to fall back on, no grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins. They were starving, and would often ask neighbors for food, and neighbors would help by giving a plate of food now and then. His mother got ill and died while the three boys were teens. They survived together by taking any jobs they could get, with the oldest brother holding them together. Hunger is a great incentive for work. As they got older, things got better but they were still poor during the depression. People helped each other back then.
The elephant in the room (and not Republicans) is the fact that about ten percent of the population is a huge drag on everybody else. The black underclass by itself costs anywhere from half a trillion to one trillion dollars through welfare dependency and their staggering amount of crime. That segment, the black underclass, is about five percent of the population and growing. Charity could handle most of the destitute without the gigantic, money-sucking segment of the population that can’t do for themselves and expects to be gratified by the American tax-payer.
Are they forgetting about the family? That was the real social safety net for most of human history; private charities and state assistance were secondary.
I just need a net, not a social net, to catch these loony socialists with.
I am committed to the belief that government charity (welfare state) contributes to the degradation of society. What little benefit it may achieve in supplementing private charity, it loses by allowing people to live anonymous and immoral lives. When charity was handled by churches, people were more interested in community, and when you are involved in community, you are more apt to be watchful of your behavior.
If you think private charity isn’t able to achieve much, I’m afraid you don’t really know the extent to which churches, fraternal organizations, social clubs and other community groups go to helping others. Government has no business being in the charity business. To the extent they pass laws, it should be to encourage private charity. Thinking that government charity adds anything postive to our society is false. It is one of the reasons our society has degraded.
The fundamental problem is that charity strengthens a society, while welfare weakens it.
Government is the greediest, most corrupt and murderous force on Earth, but government loves you.
The best social program is a job.
I always find it comical when a leftie tells me, a conservative, what I believe
You help people who can’t help themselves, not people who won’t help themselves. My Late Mother’s favorite saying.
My Father, who just turned 91, told me something when I was a whining 13 Year Old that I never forgot. That something he told me is my Tagline. Served me well for the last 47 Years.
There isn’t a Safety Net, nowadays it’s a Hammock.
I don’t know how effective private charity has been (or would be in the future), but I do know one thing - it did not lead to the creation of a permanent underclass.
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