Potoms Urges Conservatives and Libertarians to Fight the Influence of Progressives and Neoconservatives
This is a fantastic essay by Tom Potoms:
The Welfare State and How It’s Destroying the West
Potoms gives a fantastic explanation of the welfare state, why it is problematic, and what we need to do about it. Here is my favorite part of the essay:
“…I would like to urge all mainstream conservatives and libertarians to turn away from the neoconservative influence and take a firm stand against the social-democratic, progressive worldview, and to take up the real conservative world view, which is very much different from the Great Society-conservatives and libertarians who have ceded the philosophical and moral high grounds to the progressive elites.
“The welfare state, or managerial system, gives food to people lacking in personal responsibility; the progressives tell them they aren’t responsible for their own actions, it’s the fault of society that they are acting in a violent and barbaric way. The progressive argues for greater central planning and more state intervention in the economy; otherwise, society will turn into a violent place. Only through state planning can a “Great Society” be created, a Utopia that would last for a thousand years.
“…Mainstream conservatives must not be swayed by that disguised form of progressivism, neoconservative. If they are, the West will have no way to uphold its culture anymore against the progressive and multicultural elite of the New Left and its politically correct-regime.”
Potoms points out elsewhere in his essay the problems with “anarcho-tyranny,” in which our society refuses to control the criminal so that we control the innocent. It is a frightening reflection of America today.
Potoms’s essay is the best explanation of the problems of the welfare state that I have read in a while. I certainly couldn’t have given a better treatment of the topic myself!
Potoms is using a strawman argument. Who are these people who receive food that are lacking in personal responsibility? Obviously Potoms has never been hungry. I just love folks who make generalized observations on issues they have never experienced.
chris
October 1, 2007 at 8:02 am
“Who are these people who receive food that are lacking in personal responsibility?”
Come to the valley I live in. I can show you a WHOLE BUNCH of them. I can furnish an actual list with names and addresses if you’d like.
I especially love the one that sits in his car on the mountain, waves as I pass by on my way to work, and greets me on the way home still sitting there, having done nothing all day. He is “disabled”…..got on SSI after frying some of his brain cells as a youth, and is now mid-40ish. Works occasionally when REALLY desperate, but mostly collects govt benefits for himself, his wife and several children. He and several other family members trooped down to Mama’s house regularly for meals from the trailers they live in up in back of Mama……but Mama died not too long ago, so her social security stopped…….don’t know WHAT they do now, since I’m sure none of ‘em ever use a cooking utensil before.
Or the one that works JUST ENOUGH to max out his return on “earned ( it isn’t ) income credit”….. I hired him one winter to help me hang sheetrock in a house I was building….had to pay him cash off the books to get him to get off the couch, since he was laid off from a local road building company, and get’s laid off each and every year from November to March….he could drive a snowplow truck for them, but that would put him over the limit on income for EIC, so no go there…..the last day he came to work for me, he was bragging about how he got back 7,000 in EIC and tax return….which was WAY more than he paid in of course…..I asked if he planned to thank me since I’m the one that paid IN the money he was getting back ( less the federal handling fee of course )…….just got this confused look.
OR the one that isn’t married to his “wife” so she can collect the maximum benefits…..she even made the newspaper a few years ago as one of the ’success’ stories of welfare to work when she trained as a LPN…( and has never worked one day in her training)..after they had lived in a run down looking HUD house my neighbor rents them for 20 years, but the inside is filled with every electronic goodie known to man. He messes around working on cars in the yard for cash, and to have the money to attend weight lifting contests ( this guy could lift the back end of a car by himself ). They had the chance to actually BUY the house they’ve lived in for 20+ years that the taxpayer has paid the rent on…..this buy compliments ALSO of the taxpayer, a no down payment, low interest loan….but they wouldn’t take it because then they would have to start making payments, and property tax, and insurance, and all that hassle…..nah….HUD was fine for 20 years, why mess up a good deal ?
But they may be out of a home eventually….daddy that owned the house died, left it to a worthless daughter that lives up the road in a trailer…..she works off and on, but is trying her best to get on disability…..but in the mean time, her habit for not working, and drugs caused her to somehow borrow 60k on a her trailer and the rental house, which probably have a combined market value of about 30k, and are now in foreclosure.
Good luck on that deal, American General….ahahahaaa
I don’t mind a bit the choices in life people make. I DO highly resent being forced to pay for them.
But I understand “it’s for the children”…..the ones that are currently being raised to be the next generation of deadbeats.
andy
October 1, 2007 at 8:42 pm
You try to equate isolated incidents in an rather disingenious attempt to generalize everyone who receives assistance as being deadbeats. We all have stories like yours. You can’t logically say that because my neighbors engage in this type of behavior everyone who receives entitlements are just like my neighbors. The difference between you and me, I guess is that I realize those situations are not the norm. Until you can prove to me that such situations are the norm (which you can’t) your argument is a strawman. The reality is that your pereception of how easy it is to receive disability is a fallacy in and of itself. Maybe we should identify the people who you think abuse the system and let them starve, deny them healthcare, deny their children education funding, and while we’re at it create a caste system so we can identify them, making them second class citizens. Heck, it worked in the Jim Crowe south. I wonder how we could manage and oversee such a program. Nah!!! we couldn’t use the big bad ol’ governement.
Furthermore, this tiresome and insufferable use of “personal responsibility” to mask greed is so 80’s. But then again, I forgot, the gap between the rich and poor didn’t really increase under this perversion of “personal responsibility”. Ask yourself why these people are like that. Just as there is instituional racism there is institutional poverty. Just keep on opposing education funding like you love to do and see if it gets any better.
chris
October 2, 2007 at 1:39 pm
ahahahaaaaaaaaaa…..you’re a hoot Chris…..I can relate story after story after story of people that abuse the system, and you call this a “strawman” argument……yet you continue to bleet for the mythical needy…..
And as to education funding, you are again wrong…..I’ve never opposed funding for education…..I DO oppose huge federal bureaucracies that do very little for education ( or energy, or farming, etc ), but do manage to take local money, feed that bloated agency, and send what they deem appropriate back to areas they deem appropriate with the appropriate strings attached, generally based on whose congresscritter has the most time in their chair.
andy
October 2, 2007 at 9:33 pm
The fact is that you are unaware of the reality of entitlement programs. Government stats reveal that programs like welfare have enrollments for most recipeints of two years and then they move to work. Entitlement programs do not increase poverty. GAO reports indicate that after review of over 100 studies there is no evidence that programs like welfare take away the desire to work. I could go on and on with real facts and show how you cling to these common fallacies in an attempt to solidify a delusional argument. The simple reality is that you can relate story after story of isolated incidents and continue to generalize them as evidence of that your belief in common myths about entitlements are real. The facts disagree with you Andy. Pure and simple. You really don’t think there are people in this nation of ours who really need help (mythical needy?). That is another example of you Manichean thinking process.
As for the education question, I thought we had this discussion earlier. I could have sworn that through your statements of the unconstitutional aspects of federal education funding that you were in opposition to it. No time to look back, but if that is not the case you definitely gave that impression and debated my support of it. Whatever.
chris
October 3, 2007 at 1:15 pm
“Government stats reveal that programs like welfare have enrollments for most recipeints of two years and then they move to work.”
Were that ACTUALLY true, and I have only your word for it having not seen said stats, then there should be almost NO ONE on welfare as they would have moved off to work.
How then does that jive with the generations of welfare folks that have always been, and will always be, on the system ? It doesn’t…..therefore, either you are wrong, or the reports are cooked. Drive by the public housing in Johnson City…..ask them HOW LONG have you live here ? LONG time for most of them. I helped a guy move into public housing once in JC….free of charge, just being helpful…..you know, what CHARITY used to be before govt took it over and force you at gunpoint to contribute “your fair share”……anyway……do you know they have >5< bedroom units in some of them !! I bet good money you can’t find a private apartment in JC with 5 bedrms in it……but what the heck…..public is paying for it, have a slew of kids, raise ‘em on welfare and live in a 5 bedroom apartment on the taxpayer…..God Bless America.
“I could have sworn that through your statements of the unconstitutional aspects of federal education funding that you were in opposition to it.”
For the VERY LAST time Chris, I am in opposition to FEDERAL funding of education.
To do so is to take funds from localities, launder them thru a bloated federal process, and return a fraction of their choice, to the localities of their choice, with strings of their choice attached. I’ve said this over and over……I don’t understand WHY it seems unclear to you.
The fact there is no authorization in the Constitution also seems to escape you…..but I suspect you are one of the “it’s a living document” or “It’s just a GD piece of paper” bunch……in other words, throw out the rule book, and let’s make it up as we go along……which has been Federal policy for about 100 years now.
No matter…it will eventually stop when the rest of the world quits lending us the 2.5 billion a day it takes to have our cake and eat it too. It will cure the govt welfare problem as well…..unfortunately, all those who have been ‘entitled’ to slop at the public trough their entire lives are going to resent being cut off, and will probably riot in the streets resembling the chaos in New Orleans after Katrina because “SOMEBODY” needs to take care of “ME”.
andy
October 3, 2007 at 7:30 pm