If you haven’t
read Utah Senator Mike Lee’s remarks [Bring Them In] at the Heritage Foundation’s
Anti-Poverty Forum you really owe it to yourself to do so. It is probably the
most succinct conservative critique of modern government anti-poverty programs
in recent decades.
When President
Lyndon Johnson declared an “unconditional war on poverty” in his 1964 State of the Union address it represented,
arguably, the high water mark for the acceptance on liberal ideology in
America. The essence of the speech was a singleminded devotion to the “the
perfectability of man”: the notion that perfection can be achieved on Earth
through the efforts of man, or in the case, the federal government. Never mind
that some famous guy, his name escapes me at the moment, warned us all that the
poor will always be with us.
As is so often
the case, federal intervention becomes a self-licking ice cream cone where the
resources earmarked for the eradication of poverty do little more than sustain
the bureaucracy dedicated to eradicating poverty. And for good reason, if
poverty ends so do the jobs associated with its eradication.
The outcomes
have been dramatic and had they not been visited upon those at the margins of society
would have resulted in long prison sentences for all involved. Instead of
declaring a war on poverty, by Johnson’s actions he actually began the
institutionalization of poverty and hopelessness as a lifestyle.....To ReadMore....
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