[monocle]

I beg to differ with you. Welfare is working exactly as Democrats have planned. Can you name a more reliable Democrat voting block than the feeders at the public trough? The only worry the Democrats have is that this block is so well sated that it's a problem getting some of them to the polls. The Democrat solution - more absentee voting with greater ease.

[driftless]

I tend to agree with you. The Dems have mostly gained power by appealing to groups who think they need a big benevolent massa to take care of them. The similarities betweeen the old slave-master paradigm and the current "minority"-Dem paradigm are striking. One difference is that during the Civil War, thousands of slaves willingly ran away from their plantations when the federal troops arrived. Most people on welfare today are content to subsist on what the government allots them.

However there are also many non-minority people (I know quite a few myself) i.e. white people who think like the "minorities" on welfare think. They firmly believe that without the big hand of government to "protect" them, they would be buffeted mercilessly by the winds of free enterprise. It is astonishing how many normally sane people believe that they can't get anywhere without big government. Poor Blacks and other minorities may be the most adversely affected by criminal liberal policies, but there are millions of non-Blacks who have succumbed to the big government opiate of the Pie Party.