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 Olaskys 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 Ryans 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. Its 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 ...
Yeah. I’ll go straight to The Atlantic for information about what conservatism is and whom conservatives are. Right after that, I’ll go to McDonald’s to learn about raising cattle. And then I’ll go to Staples to learn about how paper is made.
The left’s ability to delude themselves is remarkably infinite.
Does it still propose that 10 year delayed medicare reform scam?
No one bought that con. A few made believe they did though.
The ‘make believe’ loyalty test.
It’s funny. Well, not so funny. I was reading today a liberals point of view about government spending. As I paraphrase, government spending is good because for ex. food stamps go to the local store and he spends via living expenses and his suppliers and so on and so on. Funny though, he never mentioned where that money came from.
Back in those good ‘ol days the family and the church did a lot to help people in trouble over the rough spots - a major reason why those wanting big, intrusive government are so hostile to both the family and religion, and do so much to try to weaken both (abortion, same-sex marriage, denial of prayer in schools and crosses in public places, and on and on) - sadly, their destructiveness is working, and so they have an excuse to increase the reach of government at every turn to step in for what’s been lost......
Applying modern liberal standards to history is unconvincing. The gist of the argument is that charity did not work because it was not welfare. I would counter that welfare does not work because it is not charity. Not only do handouts create an underclass of exploiters, it creates hostility between them and the producers, and that hostility spills over to those who really need charitable help. God loves a cheerful giver, and nobody in their right mind is cheerful when they have to pay taxes to support welfare that sends less than one third of its budget to the poor, and wastes much of that on fraud and waste, over more direct charitable giving.
“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 didnt take half of every working mans paycheck.”
The problem is the author argues in favor assistance for all who want it. In the past, welfare was shame, it came with harsh restrictions and rules. Today they beg you to take it and the shame is gone. People live for generations on the dole and are happy to do it. They do not get subsistence benefits, people learn to live comfortably or at least not uncomfortably. There is no incentive to get off, so the ranks of the useless, lazy moochers increases. Such a system cannot be sustained, but that doesnt matter as long as leftists get to feel good about themselves.
Voices For Reason’s Don Watkin’s reply to this very author:
http://ari.aynrand.org/blog/2014/03/24/the-welfare-state-myth-part-1
And the author’s views of life and freedom are summed up in this part of the article:
“As Rubinow argued, American workers must learn to see they have a right to force at least part of the cost and waste of sickness back upon the industry and society at large, and they can do it only when they demand that the state use its power and authority to help them, indirectly at least, with as much vigor as it has come to the assistance of the business interests. Because of all this, insurance had a direct public purpose, and should in turn be publicly provided.”
Small correction.
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