What is sad to me is the success of the FDR crowd in getting the pious Christian set to confuse the welfare state with the charity urged to Christians in specific.
Without the Christian context, people would have been saying Hey! This is another flavor of communism! But somehow the “Christian” patina erased criticism. It is a God-gagger.
The only answer I can see will entail evangelists rising up and succeeding in gaining an audience that doesn’t make that mistake.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Quote FROM HIS State of the Union 1935
http://www.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/fr32/speeches/su35fdr.htm
Funny how they omitted this FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) quote from the memorial: Approximate 26th Paragraph of his speech {FDR stands for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, cousin of the real President Roosevelt, Theodore (Teddy).}
Just a little side Note on Teddy: In an address delivered before the Knights of Columbus, in Manhattan Carnegie Hall, New York, October 12, 1915. Former President Teddy Roosevelt, remarked: “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.” Emphasis added by me.
“The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief {read relief as welfare} induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able bodied but destitute workers. (26th Paragraph, 5th sentence, 76 words in this paragraph.)
The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief.”
PLEASE someone get this to Rush Limbaugh, a.s.a.p.
“Thou Shalt Not Steal”
Except, apparently, when it comes to majority vote. Then it’s totes OK. This is their mindset. If they vote for the guy who promises to steal money from the “rich” and give it to the “poor” they feel as if they’ve done their good deed for the day/month/life whatever. What they fail to realize is they are in the crosshairs. Not the truly rich, who get around such things, and the truly poor, who don’t have anything to steal. The trick is the ends play against the middle.
In the past the chief hallmark of a standard issue liberal democrat was an (almost) endearing naivety, and probably (mostly) good intentions, coupled with an appalling inability to perform even simple arithmetic. These voters were leveraged into a power structure today that is wholly antagonistic to anything decent or common sense or mainstream in any objective sense. The old school liberals were purged, new school liberals are currently being purged, in successive waves. They are almost full bore communistic at this point.
Here is an excerpt from an old thread about a booklet from 1939 about FDR and the New Deal. It perhaps shows the “Biblical” angle that FDR used with regard to charity. It is a long excerpt - and the booklet is long - but VERY interesting. I was posting stuff from it all the time when obama was in office - he used the same tactics, and often the same verbiage that FDR did. obama meant to finish where FDR left off.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185147/posts
In his first inaugural address, March 4, 1933, the President said: “Values have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen;... the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side....... Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance....Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed,... Practices of the unscrupulous money-changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.... They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers.... Yes, the money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of that restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.”
[end FDR quote]
....It is not unnatural for people to think envious thoughts about large profits, and envious thoughts are very easy to exploit, as every demagogue knows. But no government before the New Deal had ever deliberately done it....Large profit as such becomes therefore a symbol of social injury, merely because it is large; moreover, it is asserted that large profit had long been so regarded by the government and penalized for that reason.
Of all the counter symbols this was the one most damaging to the capitalistic system. Indeed, if it were accepted, it would be fatal, because capitalism is a profit and loss system and if profits, even very large profits, are socially wrong, there is nothing more to be said for it.
[end excerpt]