Sea Gulls, Self-Relaince, and the Welfare State

It is no secret that I am a conservative and as such, I believe strongly in the inspired principles upon which our great nation was founded. Principles embraced in the Declaration of Independence: liberty, independence, self-determination, self-reliance, personal responsibility, and especially limited government. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration, stated, "A government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

Jefferson also listed the reasons why America needed to break free from King George III's rule in the Declaration. I find some of these reasons interesting: "He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance . . . For imposing taxes on us without our consent . . . for enlarging [government's] boundaries . . . altering fundamentally the forms of our governments." I only cite to these reasons to show that Jefferson and the other forefather patriots did not care for big government's excessive control over their lives, their property, their wealth, and their liberty.

Politicians in today's America are elected because they promise that government will provide free this, free that, and universal such and such. All these promises sound fantastic! However, these programs will lead to the formation of a welfare state. All of those 'free' programs will be run by the federal government. And as we all know, the federal government has always set the gold standard for efficiency and quality! In reality, these social programs are anything BUT free. For example, President Obama's new budget (ironically titled, "A New Era of Responsibility") asks for 600 billion + for only the first "down payment" on universal health care. How much will the final bill be if the first down payment is just 600 billion? These social programs cost trillions of dollars which the taxpayers will have to pay back sooner or later. This means significantly higher taxes - which means less liberty, freedom, and taxpayer independence.

But there are more serious problems which flow from the creation of a welfare state: more dependence on and addiction to government bailouts, handouts, and diminished incentives to be self-reliant and make good choices. Just look around at what is happening. It is easy to see that the government is ever-ready to step in between the choices we make as individuals and corporations and the consequences of those actions. Get in over your head on a house you knew you couldn't afford? Buy too many things with your credit card? Underwrite too many sub-prime mortgages? Mismanaged your car company? No problem!! Because you're "too big to fail," we'll just send the outrageous bill to fix everything to the future generations of taxpayers. A government that becomes a huge safety net for all of our problems greatly weakens our collective society. I definitely subscribe to something Jen said a while ago "THE FREE MARKET RULES! It just hurts a little sometimes."

Here is a good story illustrating the dangers of becoming more dependent on handouts found in this month's Ensign. The talk is called "The Celestial Nature of Self-Reliance," by Elder Marion G. Romney.

He quotes a story from the Reader's Digest: "In our friendly city of St. Augustine great flocks of sea gulls are starving amid plenty. Fishing is still good, but the gulls don't know how to fish. For generations they have depended on the shrimp fleet to toss them scraps from the nets. Now the fleet has moved. The shrimpers had created a Welfare State for the seagulls. The birds never bothered to learn how to fish for themselves and they never taught their children to fish. Instead they led their little ones to the shrimp nets. Now the sea gulls, the fine free birds that almost symbolize liberty itself, are starving to death because they gave in to the 'something for nothing' lure! They sacrificed their independence for a handout.

A lot of people are like that too. They see nothing wrong in picking delectable scraps from the tax nets of the U.S. Government's 'shrimp fleet.' But what will happen when the Government runs out of goods? What about our children of generations to come? Let's not be gullible gulls. We must preserve our talents of self-sufficiency, our genius for creating things for ourselves, our sense of thrift and our true love of independence."

Elder Romney then prophetically says, "The practice of coveting and receiving unearned benefits has now become so fixed in our society that even men of wealth, possessing the means to produce more wealth, are expecting the government to guarantee them a profit. Elections often turn on what the candidates promise to do for voters from government funds. This practice, if universally accepted and implemented in any society, will make slaves of its citizens. We cannot afford to become wards of the government, even if we have a legal right to do so. It requires too great a sacrifice of self-respect and political, temporal, and spiritual independence."

While acknowledging that there are many problems with the status quo and sincerely hoping that things get turned around, I cannot support the current aggressive shift towards a welfare state because of the consequences I have outlined. I will instead support policies which promote more self-reliance, less dependence on government, and more individual freedom and liberty. I feel that, in the end, these principles will lead us out of the current economic storm - not huge increases in borrowing, spending, taxing, and bigger government and bureaucracies . PLEASE COMMENT! I'm anxious to hear what you think. Sorry for the length of this post.