Charlotte, NC — “Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”—C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.
It seems like everywhere you turn in our political landscape; you get nothing but the same. You have big government solutions on the left, big government solutions on the right. Both sides represent the uniparty. There are differing factions, but the end goal is the same. They desire to increase the power and control of the ruling class.
On Monday, Tucker Carlson interviewed Polish President Andrzej Duda. In the interview, Duda said that “family is the foundation of every nation.” Who can argue with that?
Duda says a lot to agree with. In fact, most of what he said was good. And it’s all undermined when he offers a policy prescription of big government control. The insidious nature of the discussion is that Duda’s propaganda will lead so many gullible, conservative Christians to accept socialism when it’s disguised in the cloak of “pro-family values.”
And Carlson helped provide evidence to journalist Glenn Greenwald’s declaration: “I consider Tucker Carlson to be a socialist.”
Duda told Carlson: “We pledged that we would institute a program by the name of 500-plus. It is a welfare program for families in its initial version.”
Under this admitted “welfare program,” Duda pledges to give every family $130 each month for every child as well as “free” school supplies. Remember, it’s not free, and Duda ain’t paying for it. The taxpayers of Poland are.
“It’s inspiring to hear that. I wish we had it,” Carlson replied.
That response had me baffled. I was left wondering where Carlson lives where you don’t have politicians and bureaucrats handing out taxpayer-funded “free” stuff and then patting themselves on the backs declaring themselves heroes for stealing from you to give it to someone else, and shaving off a little bit of that theft for themselves.
I’ve covered locally a school district for decades, and they love usurping the role of parents. Here’s a little bit from that district in which they’re “excited to announce” that every child will be provided “breakfast and lunch meals.” And here’s the kicker, as is always the claim, it comes “at no cost.” Again, it’s not free. The taxpayers are forced to pay it.
We already have a welfare state, and that’s the problem. It has undermined the incentive of individuals. It has destroyed personal responsibility. Welfare is always destructive to the family and it undermines marriages.
You can try and add all the glowing language of being “pro-family” onto socialism. But as the old saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig.
“The pro-family movement used to be plausibly pro-liberty, especially given that the family predates government, exists in a state of anarchy, and is foundational for civilization. But leave it to politics to convert a pro-family movement into one that endorses statism of every sort,” wrote Lew Rockwell. “It may yet support the state forcing us into associations of which it approves while forbidding all others. That way lies corruption of the worst sort.”
No need to look further than the start of the modern welfare state in America during the 1930s under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The U.S. Department of Labor Children’s Bureau was distributing propaganda flyers asking parents: “Are you training your child to be happy?”
As William Anderson details for the Mises Institute, conservatives would probably cheer on what was in those propaganda pieces. It seemed “pro-family” and had “some good advice for parents.” And that propaganda persists today with, say, “safe sex” propaganda from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Of course, it’s the left that likes those pieces.
“Before going further, we need to emphasize that while the values promoted by the 1934 pamphlet are superior to the sleaze disseminated by the CDC, it changes nothing about our analysis,” Anderson wrote. “Prior to the Franklin Roosevelt presidency, it was unheard of for government agencies to engage in such ‘personal instruction’ during peacetime. The Roosevelt administration also began the peacetime ‘tradition’ that plagues our society today: the US government as chief propagandist. This is due in part to the fact that Roosevelt and his advisers found political benefits in promoting and expanding government. It is also because many of those who wrote government propaganda were unemployed writers, photographers, and other highly-educated people who found themselves on the Works Progress Administration (WPA) payroll.”
Anderson adds: “In short, it is not the content of the propaganda that makes the message of government so repugnant. Rather it is the simple fact that government is permitted to use its vast powers to bombard the public with words and pictures in order to distort truth and influence people to do things they never would have done on their own.”
The left will always take over these new “pro-family” programs, and conservatives will be left wondering what happened when they are in fact the architects of their doom.
The theology of welfare is one of societal responsibility replacing personal responsibility. Welfare is immoral, and proclaiming it “pro-family” changes nothing. I believe in family values so much that you don’t need government handouts to promote it. If the government actually sticks to its limited role, that of protecting our individual liberty, family values will thrive. If you proclaim it the government’s role to promote family values, then you’ve just handed victory to the left.
“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.”—James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, 1792.
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