The Taker Nation

In a nation where more than 50% of the people pay no federal income tax and a large and growing percent of our fellow citizens are net takers, you can bet that Obama has nearly half of the voters in his pocket because they think that he is responsible for enabling them to live on the dole.

The woman was confused, but one thing was certain in her mind: she was absolutely positive that Barack Obama was her benefactor. In her world, the hardworking taxpayers who actually foot the bill for her indolence didn't even enter the picture.

I read the article earlier, and returned to reread it. I think it does a pretty good job of identifying a symptom: a large, rapidly growing, solidly entrenched taker class that votes for more—and more and more and more—so-called "free" money from government.

The takers are the visible or apparent cause, but by no means the actual cause. They're the Statist party's constituency, and I'm very much afraid they constitute a majority of Americans. How did that happen?

Well over a century ago, the self-styled "progressives" rejected government as it existed in the United States, and resolved to replace it with their own notion of "active" government. They imported European notions of class struggle, the primacy and benevolence of the state, collective thinking versus individualism, and the so-called "progressive" view of history, which holds mankind is always evolving for the better, and can evolve even faster with the right leadership. The federal government that was then small and constrained by the Constitution needed to be enlarged, (hence the federal income tax,) and empowered to assume a more activist posture, (hence the direct election of senators.) So-called "progressive" principles of education enabled self-styled "progressives" to reshape American education. The federal government gradually became more and more deeply involved in economic activity until the depression of the 1930s, when it assumed virtual total control and prolonged the depression for years. Buying a constituency with tax dollars was untaken in full earnest with the advent of "Social Security," which promised retirement to everyone, and dependended on an ever-larger Ponzi scheme for financing. So-called "welfare" bought more voter loyalty, as did everything from "free" food stamps to unemployment checks to housing assistance to "free" federal money for schools to social workers to "free" legal assistance to "free" medical care, et cetera. What percentage of Americans sincerely believe we're entitled to "free" help from the federal government?

To one degree or another, nearly all of us. Most of us expect—or at least still hope—to receive "Social Security" checks: after all, we've paid into the system all our lives, haven't we? I'm sure very few of us at Free Republic collect food stamps, housing assistance, "welfare," and the rest of it, but those are mere extensions of and elaborations upon the original "Social Security" idea. The fundamental principle is this: government will take care of the citizens. To be fair, so-called "Social Security" appeared to work just fine for a couple generations: retirees actually got out more money than they'd paid in. So-called "Medicare" did the same thing, though as with all other federal government programs, it expanded far beyond initial expectations, cost far more than initial estimates, and has resulted in both more and more serious problems than it could possibly have solved.

It doesn't matter whether we eat a little at the free lunch or a lot or follow Congress' example and make shameless pigs of ourselves: it's still the most expensive meal of all. Most Americans still believe government both can and will take care of them. It's obvious to us it can't; that's not, however, even imaginable to the majority. Many sincerely believe the government has its own money, or it can steal enough from the "rich" to make up the difference, or it can just print as much as needed. That kind of anti-rational thinking is the result of so-called "progressive" education and the example of "Social Security," along with the apparently endless list of supposed "free services" the takers have enjoyed all this time. Why, ultimately, should they believe the free lunch will have to be paid for? What's in it for them to accept responsibility for themselves as long as someone else is willing to accept it for them? Why should they earn their way when other people are willing to pay their way?

Here's the giant killer question: how reasonable would it be to expect the takers to do anything but keep voting for politicians who promise them more and more "free services?"

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