“That welfare states tend to arise only in conditions of ethnic homogeneity is a new version of a very old problem. ‘A State cannot be constituted from any chance body of persons, or in any chance period of time,’ wrote Aristotle. ‘Most of the states which have admitted persons of another stock, either at the time of their foundation or later, have been troubled by sedition.’ What Aristotle calls sedition we, in a more relativistic age, would call dissent. Immigrants don’t have the same prejudices as natives. They have what we would call ‘fresh ways of doing things.’ That can make them valuable in a competitive society. But welfare is supposed to be a refuge from competitive modern society. It is a realm of society in which dissent, eccentricity, and doing one’s own thing are not prized — as any American who remembers the uproar in the 1980’s over ‘welfare queens’ buying vodka with their food stamps will grant…. If welfare recipients do not share the broader society’s values, then the broader society will turn against welfare.”
Christopher Caldwell
Reflections on the Revolution in Europe — pg. 58-59
The remarkable thing about combining welfare with vast legal and illegal immigration is that the consequence is that the indigenous peoples end up subsidizing their own destruction. The pursuit of such policy is in reality just a version of ethnocide and culturalcide as the massive redistribution of wealth which welfare insures enriches the newcomers at the expense of the established citizenry.
Caldwell writes that “if welfare recipients do not share the broader society’s values, the the broader society will turn against welfare, but this is only true if the leadership of the broader society is willing to govern consistent with majority opinion. As it stands now what is happening is an attempt, through the current health care proposal, at the welfarification of the entire society. If that happens then society will never turn against welfare.
Bret,
As you well know I am a “Reconstructionist Post-millenialist” (RP)… therefore have every expectation of the Church overcoming this world to the Glory of God alone. However, one upon occasion remembers a line or two from something he read to which he begins to think… “hmmmmm”. I’ve had just such a time upon occasion of late with all the… well… CRAP going on in DC and our Federal Government that I’ve upon occasion recalled the following quote… “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.” When it is that we consider the “absolute despotism”, as you mentioned in this article, to be enough?
Is there ever time to throw off such government and start over?
As I think we are all being watched now… I’m not advocating anything like this… but hypothetically… what would be the possible answer to this question within our doctrinal confines?
Obviously we have the ballot box. However, “such government” has eliminated the testosterone production of the Church through 501c3 and it’s willingness to operate within the confines of prescribed definitions to retain such non-profit status… this then leads to a large voting block that is not able to be told how to vote as a group such as… oh I don’t know… THE UNIONS.
But let’s for hypothetical purposes assume that the Church and “political conservatives” have failed once again at the ballot box… and we are now living in a society to which we have no personal control for our lives for say… oh, let’s just say we have no control over our health care… just for grins and giggles.
When do we “throw off” such a government? Further again, how does this idea square within our doctrinal confines?
Bob