If you haven’t read Utah Senator Mike Lee’s remarks [Bring Them In] at the Heritage Foundation’s Anti-Poverty Forum you really owe it to yourself to do so. It is probably the most succinct conservative critique of modern government anti-poverty programs in recent decades.
When President Lyndon Johnson declared an “unconditional war on poverty” in his 1964 State of the Union address it represented, arguably, the high water mark for the acceptance on liberal ideology in America. The essence of the speech was a singleminded devotion to the “the perfectability of man”: the notion that perfection can be achieved on Earth through the efforts of man, or in the case, the federal government. Never mind that some famous guy, his name escapes me at the moment, warned us all that the poor will always be with us.
As is so often the case, federal intervention becomes a self-licking ice cream cone where the resources earmarked for the eradication of poverty do little more than sustain the bureaucracy dedicated to eradicating poverty. And for good reason, if poverty ends so do the jobs associated with its eradication.
The outcomes have been dramatic and had they not been visited upon those at the margins of society would have resulted in long prison sentences for all involved. Instead of declaring a war on poverty, by Johnson’s actions he actually began the institutionalization of poverty and hopelessness as a lifestyle.
Via: Red State
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