The liberty principle for this
Freedom Friday concerns the war on poverty as explained by Glenn Beck. I
explained in Part 1 that the United States of America has been fighting the war
on poverty since 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his War on
Poverty initiative. The initiative was to use the full force of the U.S.
Government to intervene and provide all manner of welfare for those in need.
Since that time, the initiative has grown to “70 welfare programs to aid the
poor and has spent $22 trillion.” Yet, we have more poor among us now than we
did in 1965.
I explained in Part 2 that the “Great
Depression in the United States of America changed the world” because Franklin
D. Roosevelt kept instituting programs that made the depression worse.
In Part 3 Beck
explained how Lyndon B. Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty in
America” in 1965 while transforming the United States into “The Great Society.”
“According to Johnson, The Great
Society asked `not how much, but how good.’ Perhaps `how much’ was the greater
question because the answer was $22 trillion – and counting. The Cato Institute
estimates an additional $48 trillion in unfunded liabilities from Medicare
alone. Today, Medicare, Medicaid and FDR’s Social Security program account for
47 percent of all federal spending. That’s almost $18 trillion annually. And
the total amount of America’s unfunded liabilities are said to be in excess of
$125 trillion – more than twice the amount of all money in the world today. Was
it worth it? LBJ said `not how much, but how good.’ So how good was it? Sadly,
the poverty rate is higher today than in 1965 [when] LBJ proposed [his] many
initiatives to launch his War on Poverty….”
Government handouts do not bring
people out of poverty. Work and sacrifice defeat poverty. There is no reason
why healthy Americans should receive handouts. I believe that a “hand up” can
be very helpful, but I know that a “hand out” destroys the will to do things
for oneself.
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