The Age of the Welfare State Smashup

(I think the 'Responsible Republican Reform' and 'conservatives' mentioned below are fallacies but, a decent read just the same. N)

By Christopher Chantrill

It took a day after the election for me to realize what had happened. It is simply this: the old order has ended. We have now moved into a new era. Responsible Republican Reform is dead. The new age of the welfare state smashup has begun.

In the old era, conservatives offered to the American people a gradualist way of reforming the welfare state away from its administrative absolutism. We now realize that our effort was a failure.

Apart from the obvious reason why the American people were never going to give up their entitlements until the money ran out, there is another reason. Karl Marx taught us why in The German Ideology.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

The ruling class can call for an end to racism and then flog its supporters with racist propaganda; it can call for an end to sexism and then make blatant appeals to a single sex. It can deplore private remarks about the 47 percent and then make naked appeals to self-interest. It gets to do this until the day comes when the ruling class loses its right to rule, and that day is not yet.

With the re-election of Barack Obama and the confirmation of the mother of all entitlements, ObamaCare, the ruling class has welded into place the fourth wall of the administrative state, and we all now live in its iron cage. We are now fully confined and controlled by the four-trillion-dollar iron fences of government pensions, government health care, government education, and government welfare, just as liberals want us to be.

For people in an iron cage, the path of gradual change is closed. It will remain closed until the ruling class runs out of other peoples' money.

Like all ruling classes, liberals have maintained power by offering loot to their supporters. Like most previous ruling classes, they have begun to run out of loot and plunder to distribute among their supporters. Thus Glenn Reynolds:

Sooner or later, you run out of other people's money. Something that can't go on forever, won't. Debt that can't be repaid, won't be. Promises that can't be kept, won't be.

Continue: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/11/the_age_of_the_welfare_state...

Favorite

1 member favorited this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Chip on November 17, 2012 at 9:06am

A key word that has come to be associated with the taker or entitlement mentality is “deserve,” as in “I deserve” or “everyone deserves” certain goods. Politicians like to lecture on the things Americans “deserve” to have – free universal health care, affordable housing, or a functional economy are often mentioned. Work and the idea of earning things isn’t mentioned, yet all the things that others deserve are usually paid for right out of taxpayers’ pockets, with money taken away from the useful economy to be funneled through the hands of government and redistributed in ways that often make no sense at all.

Part and parcel with this has been the rise of groups of people who believe they deserve to have certain things and a certain kind of life – totally independent of any effort on their own part. They don’t work or contribute, but they expect to get regular paychecks and handouts from the government. While there may be certain individuals helped by government support, many others have figured out how to game the system to live comfortably off public assistance of one form or another for their whole lives.

Basically, these people are leeches – and they’re starting to outnumber the productive, contributing members of society. As a result, there’s not enough money flowing into government coffers to let the game continue. Yes, governments can print money and borrow, but there are limits to that sort of thing – you can only go so far before hyperinflation sets in or you get overthrown. In a quest to stay in power, governments around the world are reluctantly turning to austerity.
http://www.offthegridnews.com/2012/10/16/the-link-between-leeches-a...

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Nancy Oakley on November 17, 2012 at 1:17pm

The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward (1926–2001) and Frances Fox Piven (b. 1932) that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a national system of "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty". Cloward and Piven were a married couple who were both professors at the Columbia University School of Social Work. The strategy was formulated in a May 1966 article in liberal^[1] magazine The Nation titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty".^[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy

Do all of our current problems trace back to 60's radicals?

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Nathan on November 18, 2012 at 5:19pm

Do all of our current problems trace back to 60's radicals?

It does seem that way at first glance, Nancy.

Have you noticed the failure of logic in the C-P plan? It assumes that what will replace the current system is what they envision. Cloward-Piven are in the ranks of the 'useful-idiots' :)

“One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated.” Thomas More