Putting us all On the Dole: An article about the Federal Government Destroying a Culture of Responsibility

Excerpts:

“One in seven of all Americans is now on food stamps, but that’s not enough for the bureaucrats at the Department of Agriculture. They’re determined to increase that number, and to do that they must eliminate the “mountain pride” of certain Americans, who value personal responsibility and independence above all else, and get them on the government dole. It’s something like ethnic cleansing, or would be, if the feds mocked the pride and culture of any other ethnic group, whether in the mountains, valleys, flatlands or somewhere else.”

” A vigorous breed, hardy, assertive, individualistic, thrifty, trained in the democracy of the Scottish kirk, they were the material out of which Jacksonian democracy was to be fashioned, the creators of that western type that in politics and industry became ultimately the American type.” Just the sort of material, you might say, to frustrate a community organizer with illusions of hauteur.”

“SNAP has put out a brochure it calls a “tool kit,” which is shamelessly insensitive, since a tool kit suggests “work,” and this goes athwart the pride of the dole, which the feds are attempting to substitute for pride in the mountains. A section of the tool kit called “Common SNAP Myths” tells how important the feds think it is to reach people who have “beliefs” and subscribe to “myths” that make them reluctant to live on relief with charity from strangers.”

“The Daily Caller reports that the food-stamp agency has dispatched agents to overcome mountain pride with parties and games, and CNN reports that over the past four months, the agency has spent nearly $3 million on radio commercials soliciting Americans to sign up.”

““I think it’s a deep problem,” he tells the Daily Caller, “when [federal] officials think it is their duty to overcome ‘mountain pride’ or the American sense of independence and individual responsibility.”

“Neither the senator or anyone else begrudges helping the hungry or helpless; indeed, it’s a Christian’s duty, as a Scots-Irishman would readily concede. But destroying the culture that tamed the frontier and shaped America will be beyond the power and ability of a messiah from Chicago.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/6/pruden-putting-us-all-on-the-dole/?page=all#pagebreak