some of the fine folks over at FreeRepublic, and I suppose more than a few unconnected and unrepentent Bush-loving, GOP-worshiping Red Staters, seem to be excited at the prospect that so many African Americans died in Louisiana because that means fewer people on the government dole.
It’s the same old GOP nonsense — someone else, usually some dark skinned person, is living high on welfare while “us” working stiffs break our backs providing for them. It always interested how many of those “working stiffs” doing the griping were employed by defense contractors, police departments, were military retirees or school teachers. But I’ve written about this before.
What the angry Red Staters miss — and what the Dow Jones report below clearly shows — is that the whole point of gummint largesse is to get us all on some kind of welfare or another, whether we are earning a salary for wearing a uniform or a badge and brandishing a weapon to keep our “fellow citizens” in line, or we “administer” some gummint program (either as a gummint worker or as a “contractor”) or even if we are given “handouts” because, in the infinite wisdom of the planners and managers, there is simply no paid wage jobs for us and no way we can easily, legally do business on our own.
The dole is the point of government. Stifling individual initiative is the whole point of government, whether it is “conservative” or “liberal,” rightist or leftist.
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency confirmed Wednesday that his organization plans to provide $2,000 debit cards to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Michael Brown told reporters the FEMA had never done this before, and it was an attempt to provide the victims with some cash in hand for clothing, supplies or other needs and to “empower” them to make their own decisions.
He said $2,000 was a “minimum.”
Brown has come under heavy criticism for the the way his agency initially responded to the hurricane. At a news conference aired by cable news outlets, Brown was asked if he had offered his resignation. He replied: “I serve totally at the will of the president of the United States.”
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
I won’t argue that government has some kind of role in providing immediate disaster assistance; given what government — especially the US federal government — claims to or pretends to plan for, it ought to only provide, or help coordinate, immediate humanitarian relief and emergency assistance. But when it comes to people picking up their lives, the managers ought to get the hell out of the way, and leave people to pick up their own pieces and rearrange their own lives and communities as they see fit. And pay for it themselves too.
Human beings have done this for a long, long time. The world is full of the ruins of cities. And ruins upon ruins. Nature is cruel. People are tough.
I can see a future of government doles just like this — for displaced workers, for disaster victims, for anyone and everyone who needs aid. It’s beautiful, if you think about it, because it saps just enough initiative on the part of the recipient while keeping the ostensibly “employed” taxpayer enraged enough to keep voting for idiot Republicans. (I suspect the cards mentioned above will likely be issued, in the name of FEMA, by Boeing or some other company experienced at making money only by sucking at the teat of the state.)
The greatest evil of Reagan/Thatcher conservatism is its lack of faith in human beings to be able to take care of themselves, and its belief that government can really alter human nature, for better of for worse. So it isn’t enough to attempt to dismantle the “traditional” welfare state, the Reagan/Tatcher conservative must also create replacement structures to cajole, hector and coerce the desired behavior. Human beings — at least inferior ones, since this kind of conservatism is heavily influenced by Social Darwinism — will never do the right thing, never provide for themselves and their families, unless they are forced to or given “the proper” incentives. By government. And only government.
(After all, truly free and self-reliant human beings don’t need much government. Then where would all these good conservatives be?)
In this view, everything becomes a government program. Even capitalism. And we are incapable, in the eyes and minds of the managers, of accomplishing anything on our own. It makes me wonder: do they ever consider how our ancestors ever did anything hard, like invent agriculture, domesticate animals, build cities, move thousands of miles to a land they’d only heard of to build new lives, and create wealth with their bare hands from the earth?
2:58 pm on September 7, 2005
