Theodore Dalrymple:
I remember a population that was terrified of falling into dependence on the state, because such dependence, apart from being unpleasant in itself, signified personal failure and humiliation. But there has been an astonishing gestalt switch in my lifetime. Independence has now come to mean independence of the people to whom one is related and dependence on the state. Mothers would say to me that they were pleased to be independent, by which they meant independent of the fathers of their children — usually more than one — who in general were violent swine. Of course, the mothers knew them to be violent swine before they had children by them, but the question of whether a man would be a suitable father is no longer a question because there are no fathers: The state would provide.
Creepy? Oh yeah.Reminds me of an old movie called The Boys of Brazil.
Since the post war era there have been essentially, 2 kinds of people/voters – those who want to trade their integrity and independence to feed from confiscated state largess, and those who want to be left alone – this government subsidy of insiders, remittance voters and rent seekers has been cultured by a progressing leftist government into creating state dependence, – this is diametrically opposite to the vision the liberal democrats had who founded both Canada and the US had. It is anathema to the traditions of liberal democratic free societies and the cultural achievement of that political enlightenment.
Over time this has polarized the population into 2 camps – the government worshipping takers and the independents who fund the plunder – the vast ideological and entitlement chasm between the two is exploited to the max by perfidious partisan operatives as we saw in the last Ontario election.
We now live in a political era where the traditional enlightened vision of a restrained unintrusive state are about to clash with the state dependency which is ushering in a new dark age of authoritarianism and unbridled corruption – look south to the open border agenda to secure a dependent voting block for kleptocratic corruption. If you wish to remain free of this putrefying paradigm shift you has best ready yourself for more effective methods of resistance beside casting a vote in a rigged game.
yah Occam, I like the way you use a lot of words to say basically nothing and in the process avoid the elephant in the room. State welfare is an extension of church “welfare”. The churches went beyond what was needed and allowed a dependent class to evolve, which the state then “hijacked” at the insistence of the lefties who wanted to help, but not with their own monies, plus now the lefties had at least atrial control of the scheme. People in here keep saying that modern western society is built on kristian values, but then try to divest themselves of it’s failures.
So, the atheist Lefties are killing the nation’s culture on purpose… and its all the Xtian’s fault?
Dude. Seriously?
Anonymnous is me: Steakman.
All I can say is this…If Justin Trudeau gets in with a majority in this country..we are as doomed as were the Americans when that Anti-Christ Muslim lover OBAMA came in to power.
As for Ontario, Mmy only hope is that that the Bond ratings agencies de-rate Ontario’s debt to B or lower status…it just might wake theme all up…??
Like I keep repeating, A tax on all do-gooders, 150% of their gross income.
A do-gooder is easily defined, as a power hungry nitwit who demands the right to apportion other peoples resources to an imaginary good.
Attacks on such people are now necessary to preserve civl society.
If a person will not lift a finger to help themselves, WHY should anyone else?
“State welfare is an extension of church “welfare”.
The difference between the two is that State welfare is based on coercion while church welfare is voluntary.
The private sector has the right to burn its money if it so chooses. The public sector has no right to burn taxpayer money.
It’s NME 666. Enough said.
Family and religion (to paraphrase Mr. Burns) are the demons the left must slay in order to make its delusional society work. Sure, one COULD marry and have a family, thereby fulfilling the need to boss a little body around but then one would have to work and that is a drag, so…
Furthermore, creating an entire class of needy people helps the left justify its existence. A religious charity knows the poor will always exist and ask those who can help to do so. This helps the needy and shapes the giver spiritually. How is one shaped when one is forced to cater to the choosy beggars?
True – and there’s this. The church was interested in the good of the person helped, which meant that there was an attempt to help the recipient turn his life around. The state has no such interest: the bureaucrat’s job is jeopardized his charges go off the welfare rolls.
More broadly speaking, the old calculus of almsgiving was this: the giver gave freely and the recipient was grateful for the assistance. This produced the societal good of solidarity and the human good of charity. Now, the state extracts money from the unwilling to give to those who feel entitled to it, through whose votes the power to extract the funds are ensured. That engenders feelings of resentment on the giver’s side and arrogance on recipient’s side. What’s more, it weakens society through polarization, sloth, and apathy.
It’s clear this situation won’t work in the long run. The question is, what will society look like when the edifice of the modern state and all its social programs comes crashing down? Could that be why I’m seeing much more interest in things like small scale farming, food insurance, gold purchasing, off-grid living and other hedges against societal breakdown?
Every single thing you said: +1.
To add to your excellent post, the churches had the ability to determine the actual need of the recipient. Freeloaders were not encouraged to receive aid. It worked even better when congregations met in each other’s homes.
“State welfare is an extension of church “welfare”.
Actually, state welfare was and is an attempt to undermine the unity of churches, which historically were a place for people to organize against the tyrannical state.
See the American Revolution as an example. The revolutionaries met and organized in their churches.
The state’s goal here wasn’t to be an extension of the church, but to supplant, co-opt, it.
Jealous of people’s loyalty to church and family, the state was and is.
Yes!
On your last quote, the goal of the Marxist was to foster an ersatz religion, one which worshiped the State with faith in the idea that an all powerful State was “progress”, all the while hiding the swindle that the State’s purpose was really to empower the Marxist ruling class and its apparatchiks.
Anything that isolated the individual from the State, or provided a different moral vision than that from the State had to be destroyed. Those who held the strings of the Marxist states were ruthless in persecuting churches and their clergy (cf. Red Terror in Spain). They also were out to destroy the family. An example: The second person in Europe to advocate the legalization of abortion (after de Sade in “La philosophic dans le boudoir” in 1795) was Engels. The lead to Lenin legalizing abortion in the Soviet Union in 1920.
In short, it’s not lost on Leftists that the breakdown of Church and the family makes the individual naked and powerless before the almighty power of the State.
Dalrymple was talking about the English underclass, but he could just as easily be talking about Canadian Reserves or American ghettos. It’s got nothing to do with race, it’s all about incentives and disincentives. People respond to these incentives and disincentives.
I have seen this over and over again. The Left proposes something, ostensibly to help people who need the help, and totally ignore the incentives and disincentives that are created by the specifics of implementation. And those incentives and disincentives make the problem worse.
The State has taken over hospitals, education, Universities, welfare. Most of our Civilizations institutions for more power & centralization to Politicians.From Churchs. They even made a hash of school churches by interfering with them used against Indians. How has that turned out?
To my mind just like Government .No accountability with silly add ons like multiculturalism with middle class Family destroyed.Education a joke. Health care now rationed.Low literacy. No Nationalism. The Nations treasury used to enrich a Political elite along with crony welfare corporations.None take any responsibility. All hide behind the towers of big Government.
“I like the way you use a lot of words to say basically nothing”
Heh, too much cheap whisky in the corn flakes this AM?
Unfortunately for the cognitively impaired, words really do mean something and failure to grasp their meaning indicates ignorance in the reader not the writer.
BTW – the 1st estate and 2nd estate merged as a matter of concentrating power, wealth and prestige in the hands of elites, state welfare is a machination of post modernist atheism not an outgrowth of the estates of the clergy.