“If you are receiving government payments in any of its redistributive forms, then you have no business going to one of these events (Tea-Parties). Food stamps, student loans, subsidized housing, public schooling, and so on — your time would be better spent just staying home and trying to figure out how to disconnect the oxygen hose yourself. Refuse the benefits first.”
Doug Wilson
This is why the tea parties, while stirring, won’t accomplish much. We already are past the entitlement tipping point. How many social security recipients were out 15 April? How many school teachers were out 15 April? After all, Government schools are the biggest works programs this nation has. Do protesting school teachers really desire to reduce the size of Government? How many veterans were out 15 April? Do veterans really desire to reduce the size of Government?
Obviously, this is not to say that some ways that Government spends money are legitimate and as such some employees who receive government money are legitimate. All of this is only to suggest that as a nation we are already compromised. To many piglets trying to get to the teats to really want to kill the sow.
Mind you, I don’t fault all the piglets for trying to get the milk of government largess anymore then I would fault a crack baby for desiring the drug it was hooked on quite apart from his or her choice. Many people are government dependent quite apart from their choice. One has to only think of not only children eating off of groceries coming from food stamps, but also one needs to remember the cottage industries that grow up around Government largess. Think of all the copying machines and office supplies that private businesses sell to public schools and government offices. Government money and dependence on government largess in the private sector is ubiquitous. Trying to pull apart the culture of government benefits from the US citizenry and the private sector would be like trying to pull juicy chewing gum out of stringy hair.
The Church struggles with providing a solution to all this. Ideally, we would try to care for our own, but since the individuals in Churches are already taxed at such a high rate, it is difficult to expect members to give enough, beyond a tithe, so that the Church can care for her own. It is expecting a great deal of people to finance, through their taxes, the States irresponsible social services while at the same time finance, through their offerings, the Churches responsible social services. One can only spread butter so thinly over humongous portions of bread.
We have created a entitlement culture, replete with all the cottage industries that spring up around any major job and benefits supplier. We have forced many people to either suck at the teat of the Government sow or die. (If you doubt this imagine what would happen to elderly people who refused to take the government benefits associated with prescription drug use.) If and when the State nationalizes health care there won’t be anybody left who won’t getting milk from the Wet Nurse State. Because of this there are no easy answers in how to extricate ourselves from this tar baby entitlement culture we’re stuck on and with. Because of this our Freedom as a people is completely compromised. None of us are really free.
To be honest it is our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who should have been out Tea(ing), but many of them were to busy voting for Johnson’s Great Society or Roosevelt’s New Deal or Teddy Roosevelt’s square deal. The, so called, “greatest generation” failed us miserably on this score. It was these generations that laced our tea with arsenic and now we have naught to do but bravely drink it down.
Of course, none of this means we shouldn’t fight to the very end. But we must fight with eyes wide open. We are a defeated people and culture in the twilight of our eclipse. The best we can hope for is to make some kind of glorious last stand that some minstrel might capture in song, and that might be remembered by generations yet to come, who, remembering our final effort, might use it to inspire future generations to build Christ honoring culture.
Some will suggest that this is overly pessimistic. I will be accused of having lost my postmillennialism. However, postmillennialism should not require us to be Pollyanna about reality. One can be a postmillenialist and at the same time believe that the West will fail. There is nothing about the West that guarantees that God won’t continue to bring the judgment we deserve.
As someone who has recently become more self-conscious of my own dependency upon the State, while finding it hard to tear myself out of its clutches (the image from the Matrix comes to mind in my head; where Neo takes the pill and awakes to realize the machines are sucking from his body in order to power themselves).
Lasting change, like postmillennialism expects, comes incrementally, and it does not presuppose that rises and falls are indications of immanent triumph or immanent defeat. We are presently at a significant low in terms of knowledge of and obedience to God’s Word–and even among the knowledgable, obedience comes hard because of the pervasive power of the State and the culture’s complicity with an ideology that supports and grows its power.
We must strive to extricate ourselves from our own contradictions, to preach to others and pray that God would open their eyes and enable their wills to choose the hard path as well. You can certainly pray for me, as I am constantly burdened by how I contribute to enshackle myself to the things I would be free from.
Joshua,
I will pray for you, but keep in mind that I believe that we are all shackled. That includes me.
So you can pray for me at the same time and in the same way.
Bret,
I will brother, I will. In the meantime, there is much good to be accomplished and we have the benefit of knowing that in the midst of great darkness, the light may appear brighter and more precious to those who do not flee from it, or seek to extinguish its flame.
I would have declined government-financed student loans had it been acceptable to my parents. I am at least paying them off as quickly as possible (by this July, hopefully).
With Kyle, I feel the need to defend my use of y’all’s stolen monies. Upon returning to undergraduate studies in 1996, I found myself wanting to finish as soon as possible. Having a wife and newborn, I though the best way to do this was through Federal Financial Aid. I’ve learned alot, since then, and would like to think that had I realized that by having the government pay my interest, I was actually stealing from working men and women, I would have avoided incurring such debt. I’m not sure how it could have been done, however.
In addition, the reality of the modern system forces those of us who want to help the most people to accept payment from “third-party” payors, including Medicare/Medicaid. I am an employee, not an employer, and not currently in position to do more than complain about our system to hospital/clinic administrators. Hopefully, this will either change when my contract is up, or when the welfare/warfare state collapses.
I am not lying when I say I will work for barter, once that system is better for my patients than the current broken system (and once I fulfill my contractual obligation to the state).
Jay
Hey guys …. I was 18 once also and took government loans.
If I had known then, what I know now …..
One of your best posts, Bret, and I concur with the thoughts and the tone beneath them. I think we just have to wait for Mises’ crack-up boom until “full faith and credit in the U.S. government” shows itself for what it really is. The end will be when the currency goes down, which will mean the end of U.S.-initiated wars and social programs.
Wilson said: “Refuse the benefits first.”
I agree, except that Wilson’s list has at least three things that poor people depend on (not typically the makeup of Reformed churches I have been a part of). I’m not sure he mentioned anything that would affect much of his congregation. We could make it more personal for middle-class Reformed types. Should I take the $8000 tax credit offered this year to first-time home buyers? The government will write me a check for $8000.
I could consider this transferred money from you all to me. Or I could consider it money that I once sent to the government that I am now getting back.
We could think of a host of examples like this where the conundrum in the above paragraph occurs. What do you think about this?
Joshua,
Recently, I read someone write that we should encourage people to take all the money they can from the government in hopes that a run on the government would accelerate its destination to bankruptcy. Novel idea.
For my part, I should think that if I pay 10,000.00 amount of money to the government then I should expect 10,000.00 back minus whatever the expense is for doing those things the government is supposed to be doing.
The whole thing is such a mess. I don’t care how it happens, I just want it to die.
“The whole thing is such a mess. I don’t care how it happens, I just want it to die.”
I recently realized that my friends, family and neighbors are unlikely to see my (possible?) wisdom in thinking this way. I wonder if the original american patriots realized going into the war that the Tories in their own lives would probably not be singing their praises in their lifetimes
Jay