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Thinking Out Loud: The Founders’ Take on the Welfare State

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Bruce Kauffmann

Americans today are more dependent on the largesse of the federal government than at any time in our history. Government dependency — defined as those persons receiving one or more federal benefit payments — is the highest ever (47 percent). Welfare spending is also the highest ever, at $700 billion annually. More Americans are on food stamps than ever before, nearly 40 million, almost double what it was when President Bush left office. And, of course, America is $17 trillion in debt.

When Republicans complain about this, they are labeled uncaring and unmindful of the fact that most of them were born into affluence, or at least had solid middle-class backgrounds, that gave them a distinct advantage over the nation’s less fortunate.

So what would the Founding Fathers say about all of this? Surely there were many less fortunate Americans in the 18^th Century who couldn’t take care of themselves and needed assistance in order to survive. How did the Founder’s approach this age-old problem?

By firmly recognizing that, yes, less fortunate Americans needed help, but the government should be the helper of last resort. The best way to assist the less fortunate was through local civic institutions — family, church, neighbors, community groups, charitable organizations — which were far more familiar with the conditions that caused poverty and hardship among their fellow citizens, and thus were better able to address the causes of the problem. To the Founders, a food stamp or other welfare program administered in Washington and intended to benefit citizens in localities hundreds, even thousands of miles away, was unfathomable.

Emphasizing local citizen organizations over distant government bureaucrats also made sense because, while many citizens in the 18^th Century were truly disadvantaged, many others — as is even more the case today — were gaming the system due to laziness and irresponsibility. As such, those in the local community organizations, having regularly interacted with their fellow citizens, were far more likely than a federal bureaucrat working in Washington to identify the truly needy, as opposed to the lazy and irresponsible.

Finally, in the Founders’ day citizens were far less permissive. Personal, moral and civic responsibility were considered crucial to the community’s, and nation’s, welfare, and those who exhibited those traits, even if they had fallen on hard times, were welcomed and helped. Those who did not were not.

By contrast, in today’s culture of “moral relativism” we have become so permissive there is hardly any stigma attached to living off the government, and in some programs — food stamps being one — the government has actually encouraged enrollment.

Ben Franklin once wrote, “The more public (government) provisions that were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer.”

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Our Constitution and Trading in Slaves

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Bruce Kauffmann

The Founding Fathers are often called “demi-Gods,” mostly because of the document they produced and signed this week (Sept. 17) in 1787, the U.S. Constitution.

But there is a reason for the “demi.” They were far from perfect, as evidenced by two shameful provisions in this Constitution — the fugitive slave clause, which forced northern states to return runaway slaves to their owners in southern states, and Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 1, which extended for eight years, until 1808, the time period in which Congress was forbidden to interfere with the slave trade.

I have written before of the embarrassment our Founders must have felt in protecting slavery in this sacred document, even using the euphemism “Persons” to describe slaves so that they could keep the word “slavery” out of the Constitution (while keeping the institution of slavery in it).

But the language protecting the importation of slaves until 1808 — which meant importing an additional 40,000 slaves into America — is an even more astonishing example of euphemism and obfuscation. Here the Founders’ embarrassment knew no bounds.

The passage reads: “The Migration or Importation of such Persons [slaves] as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight … ”

Does anyone think that even one of those 40,000 slaves migrated to America? Were they like certain birds who, not liking the hot weather in Africa, decided to migrate to the milder temperatures in the slave states of America’s South?

Further, is it not curious that the Founders made the claim that, when they thought it “proper,” they were “admitting” these slaves into their country, as if 40,000 Africans would petition to be let into America so that they could be chained, whipped and worked to death? And which slaves did the Founders think were not “proper to admit” — other than those who were old, infirm or near death thanks to the horrifying conditions they endured in the slave ships that carried them across the ocean to America?

There is not a more shameful passage in the Constitution, but there is one irony — the inclusion of the seemingly innocuous phrase “as any of the States now existing …” That suggested that the Founders meant to protect slavery only in those states that existed when the Constitution was signed. Abe Lincoln would point to that language as proof that the Founders never intended for slavery to spread to the new territories — later the new states — that would enter the Union.

Disagreement on that very point was the main cause of the Civil War — a war that finally ended slavery forever and everywhere in America.

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Johnny Cash – The Man in Black

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Bruce Kauffmann

When country music icon Johnny Cash made his singing debut at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry in 1957, he strode on stage wearing nothing but black, a sharp contrast to the colorful costumes that both the audience and his fellow performers were wearing. Thus did he both earn the nickname, “The Man in Black,” and earn the image of an outlaw.

Which he was and wasn’t. Certainly Cash had his demons. He spent years of his life abusing both alcohol and drugs, which contributed to the breakup of his first marriage and nearly derailed his career. But he was also a devout Christian — he described those years of drug and alcohol abuse as him “straying from God” — and he was a committed penitent who studied the Bible and even made a movie about the life of Jesus.

And he was humbled by his loss of grace, and empathized with all who were downtrodden or struggling with their own demons — he wore black on behalf of the poor and hungry, he once said, “and the prisoner who has long paid for his crime.”

Speaking of which, having written and recorded “Folsom Prison Blues” in 1955 — a song that looks at life through the eyes of a condemned man — Cash received hundreds of letters from inmates at Folsom Prison, and other prisons, asking that he perform for them, which he did many times, and his live album “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison,” is a classic that reached Billboard magazine’s “Top 100” at a time — the late 1960s — when the music industry was mostly ignoring country music to promote Rock ‘n Roll. As one admiring Rock musician, U2’s lead singer, Bono, later put it, “Johnny doesn’t sing for the damned. He sings with the damned.”

Cash’s overt religious faith was, in many cases, detrimental to his career and estranged him from many of his fellow country artists, who thought he had sold out to religion. “They’d rather I be in prison than church,” Cash said, but his answer to his critics was simple. “I am not a Christian artist. I am an artist who is Christian.”

Cash’s faith, if one looks for it, can be heard in many of his songs, including “I Walk the Line,” arguably his most famous song. “I keep a close watch on this heart of mine,” he sang, because he was always walking the line between Christian faith and temptation, but in the end he chose his faith, and his millions of fans loved him for it. In an industry replete with shallow and phony people he was the real deal.

Cash died this week (Sept. 12) in 2003, a sinner redeemed. “The Man in Black” had seen the light.