Whether because I am naturally an optimist, do not believe in original sin, or am just plain proud of our nation’s history of self-sacrifice to help others, I believe the vast majority of Americans are good and compassionate people. We see this daily in the form of uncountable hours of civic volunteerism, a river of charitable giving, and our ingrained national habit of rushing to right wrongs wherever we see them—either at home or abroad.
Unfortunately, our generous nature can be taken advantage of in a whole variety of ways, and a startlingly large number of frauds designed to empty our nation’s treasury (many of which recently seem to revolve around shameless illegal immigrants and their equally shameless enablers or the mismanaged money dumps during the outrageous Covid-19 scam-demic) test both our patience and the limits of our love for our fellow man and women (and what might exist in between). We want to help, but we do not want to be taken advantage of by those who equate our kindness with foolishness and settle in for a long ride on the taxpayer’s dime.
Fake hospices in California, fake daycare centers in Minnesota—and fake Medicare, Medicaid, and Unemployment claims almost everywhere—are just the most visible manifestations of a pervasive culture of elaborate deception and outright theft that causes many hardworking and honest Americans to wonder whether we are good Samaritans or complete suckers. Slogging away for a 40-50 hour workweek while dropping of your precious child at daycare (all so that somebody else can be a stay-at-home parent with food and housing assistance) starts to seem like a pretty bad deal when you file your taxes every year. It becomes even more infuriating when it becomes apparent how much of the taxes one pays is flowing straight into the pockets of those who think hard work and playing by the rules is for chumps.
About ten years ago I stepped into a local service station to pick up a cup of wondrous, hot coffee and found the cashier, an older and somewhat haggard White woman, being berated by a younger Black woman. After ascertaining it was only words and no physical harm was likely to come to either party, I waited with my drink for the storm to pass—and observed compassion gone awry in action.
As near as I could understand, the young woman was upset that the tall boy can of beer that she had on the counter could not be paid for with her SNAP food benefits, and she had no cash on hand to cover it. When the cashier wearily and politely asked the young woman to stop yelling at her—she said was just finishing up a tiring double shift because her relief had not shown up for reasons unknown—this turned into a cue for the young woman to start berating the older one for being so “dumb” for working so hard. After bragging about how comfy and easy her life was without having to lift a finger, she flounced out, laughing as the older woman’s face fell in anger, shock, and dismay.
When I stepped up to make my purchase, she was still shaking and practically spitting mad. Knowing I had seen what transpired with the other customer, she looked me straight in the eye and said this, almost at the point of tears: “Can you believe it? I’ve been working all of my life, and this is what I have to put up with? I’m told that I’m stupid for doing my job?”
Although some might presume this was a racist confrontation, I believe the younger woman simply felt it necessary to win back some wounded pride when the cashier firmly declined to process her alcohol purchase with her public assistance card. The toxic combination of the young woman’s poor self-esteem and brazen entitlement crashing into reality resulted in anger directed at another human in the most obnoxious way possible.
Obviously, this is simply an anecdote—although it is one of those “lived experiences” that so enamor the political and cultural Left in America—but it illustrates an increasingly bitter divide in America today between the so-called “takers” and “makers” in our country. As the public assistance programs have multiplied since the days of President Johnson’s “Great Society” push, the habit of hard work has gradually been extinguished among a segment of of our population that is estranged from academic achievement, marriage, personal responsibility, sobriety, chastity, empathy, and impulse control. Dependence on taxpayer-funded handouts (these are not “free” except in the minds of the politically math-challenged) has produced cultural norms that celebrate virtually every behavior that is guaranteed to produce continuing life failures that can be passed down to the next generation by parents who have no clue how to actually parent.
It should be little surprise that a great many Americans are uninterested in continuing to fund social dysfunction that does little other than provide employment for police, public defenders, and prison personnel. The truly shocking aspect of all of this is that Democrat elected officials across our nation now strive to protect the felons and fools because they see the “takers” as a reliable political constituency that must be insulated from accountability and further augmented with the importation of immigrants who are also expected to become avid consumers of the public assistance programs that they refuse to alter, audit—or even examine all that closely to determine their efficacy or long-term outcomes.
For the majority of our citizens this is not a thought experiment regarding the continuum between, as Democratic New York City Mayor has hypothesized, “the frigidity of rugged individualism [and] the warmth of collectivism” or even a Republican-Democrat issue. For a large number of Americans who are perhaps still crazy enough to learn and earn—and pass this example on to their children and grandchildren—it is a necessary and long overdue conversation about funding irresponsibility on a societal level in America.