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The Servile Citizen
The New Individualist - A Publication of The Atlas Society ^ | Summer 2009 | Edward Hudgins

Posted on 10/08/2009 7:15:40 AM PDT by Ed Hudgins

A large billboard in a local Metro station cautions passersby to “Cover your cough” and “Wash your hands frequently” when you have a cold. Nearby, a sign in a bus shelter instructs citizens: “Do not cross street until bus has left.” These signs have been erected courtesy of “Mommy Government” to help you, the presumed adult-child citizen of the Infantilized Republic of America. It’s a picture of the most serious internal threat to America: the decline of self responsibility and its replacement with dependence on paternalistic government, namely, on handouts from other coerced individuals and on a nit-picking Napoleonic code of rules handed down from legislators. A confused morality that derides self-interest and self-regard makes this conversion to a servile condition possible. This confused morality now dominates our culture and politics.

There are many signs of this cultivated dependence. Consider a few:

• In September 2008 a record number of individuals—31.5 million or some 10.5 percent of the population—were receiving federal food stamps.

• The number of students receiving federal government Pell Grants to help pay for college rose from 176,000 in 1973-74 school year, the first year of the program, to 2.5 million by 1980, 3.3 million by 1990, 3.8 million by 2000, and 5.3 million by 2005.

• The number of individuals receiving Federal government handouts (for housing, health and welfare, retirement, education, and rural services) rose from 21.7 million or 11.6 percent of the population in 1962, to 58.7 million or 19.4 percent by 2007. (The Heritage Foundation, “2008 Index of Government Dependency.”)

• The Heritage study found that the income and non-financial support per capita for individuals receiving such federal support, adjusting for inflation, grew from $6,437 in 1962 to $31,005 in 2007....

(Excerpt) Read more at atlassociety.org ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: communityservice; liberty; obama; servitude

1 posted on 10/08/2009 7:15:40 AM PDT by Ed Hudgins
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To: Ed Hudgins

“Do not cross street until bus has left.” That one ALWAYS makes me laugh. What it really says is: “Yo, Stupid, don’t walk in front of a moving bus that is coming toward you.”


2 posted on 10/08/2009 7:27:49 AM PDT by La Lydia
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To: Ed Hudgins

Those signs make it seem like your walking through an elementary school.


3 posted on 10/08/2009 7:37:18 AM PDT by GeronL
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To: GeronL

Leftists consider us all to be stupid elementary school child who can’t run our own lives and need them as our parents.


4 posted on 10/08/2009 7:57:03 AM PDT by Ed Hudgins (Rand fan)
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To: GeronL
Those signs make it seem like your walking through an elementary school.

Not my walking through an elementary school

5 posted on 10/08/2009 5:43:51 PM PDT by sionnsar (IranAzadi|5yst3m 0wn3d-it's N0t Y0ur5:SONY|Remember Neda Agha-Soltan|TV--it's NOT news you can trust)
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