From The Federalist Patriot:
SUBSCRIBE: FREE by E-mail! Get your own subscription to The Patriot!
http://FederalistPatriot.US/subscribe/The Nanny State of the Union - Page 1______----********O********----______
THE FOUNDATION
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." --Thomas Jefferson
______----********O********----______
THE PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
Top of the fold -- The Nanny State of the Union
Ever wonder how dependent the American people have become on the federal government compared to, say, a generation ago? Now, thanks to The Heritage Foundation's new study, "The 2005 Index of Dependency," we can answer that question -- but be forewarned; the data doesn't paint a pretty picture.
This informative study explores the degree, nature and effects of our dependence on government, examining five broad categories of socio-economic federal intervention: housing assistance, healthcare and welfare assistance, retirement income, post-secondary education subsidies and rural and agricultural services. With a benchmark dependence score of 100 for the year 1980, American citizens' dependence on federal government assistance has mushroomed to a score of 212 on the Heritage index, more than twice that of a generation ago.
The fact that such burgeoning government interventionism in state, community and private affairs is beyond the constitutional pale goes without saying. For the Founders, dependence on government in private and public life was to be avoided at all costs -- such dependence, as they rightly saw it, being the root of bondage. "Dependence," said Thomas Jefferson, no doubt reminiscent of the abuses of the British Crown, "begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." Independence, then, was the key to private liberty and public virtue.
By the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, however, "independence" was redefined to mean economic security -- and government was its guarantor. "Necessitous men are not free," Roosevelt told Congress, so their freedom must be guaranteed by the all-encompassing state. Eventually, the New Deal would give way to the Great Society, with Lyndon Johnson declaring that the purpose of government was no longer merely to guarantee rights -- government was to provide "not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and equality
as a result."
So much for Jefferson's admonition.
All the same, perhaps that admonition is worth reconsidering. The real question emerging from Jefferson's warning is, does the growth of dependency fundamentally change the nature of our democracy? That's the question the Index of Dependency answers with such lucidity. (The answer, in case you're wondering, is a resounding yes.)
How, exactly, does our democracy change? As responsibilities are removed from local communities and states to the federal level, choices and decision-making powers are removed as well. Individuals no longer enjoy the same flexibility of choice as they previously did; decisions are imposed from above. Flexibility to address local needs is lost, replaced with decisions made by an increasingly entrenched bureaucracy eager to illuminate to us, the people, what's really in our interest.
Sound familiar? It should. The process described here is what's known as "welfare democracy," and its ever-growing presence has become the pattern characterizing -- to one degree or another -- every industrialized democracy in the world today. In fact, the growth of such welfare democracies has become so predictable that we can identify its basic pattern: A country becomes a stable democracy (of some variety); democracy promotes the country's growth in wealth; the now-wealthy country perceives its "duty" to use this wealth for social care and betterment (welfare); the ever-growing entitlements sap the state's original economic vitality; and the citizenry becomes dependent on the state from cradle to grave. Today, France, Sweden, Germany, Great Britain and Canada are only a few of the worst offenders.
Besides the removal of decision-making authority from individuals and communities, growth in dependency distorts our democracy by fundamentally changing the relationship between the individual and the state. Granted, both community-based and federal assistance involve a dependent relationship with the individual, but, as Heritage reminds us, "The first is a dependent relationship with the civil society that includes expectations of the person's future civil viability or ability to aid another person. The latter is a dependent relationship with a political system without any reciprocal expectations."
==========================See Page 2