Benjamin Franklin could shuck down to the cob quicker than most, and he had some pretty strong feelings regarding welfare:

I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor (November 29, 1766)

Get a good grip on that, now. He’s not for the welfare state. He’s not for ongoing charity.

He is for leading or driving the poor out of poverty. He doesn’t want them to be poor anymore!

Pretty ambitious son-of-a-gun if you ask me. If he were to try “leading or driving” the poor out of poverty today, he’d have Je$$e Jack$on picketing on his doorstep, Katie Couric on TV with a welfare mom tearfully explaining how she and her four children barely get by now, Al not-so-Sharpton screaming racism, Hillary Rodham Rodham calling for an investigation, and the mainstream media descending on him like a pack of wolves following the smell of warm blood in the dead of winter.

And all because he wants the poor not to be poor anymore. Scandalous!

Jesus Christ said, “The poor you will always have with you.” The Son of God acknowledged that there would always be poor people!

You see, the problem with the poor not being poor anymore is that they would then have to take care of themselves. They couldn’t depend on the welfare state to supply them with a subsistence wage, food stamps, free medical care, and trips to the polls on election day. They might even have to actually (gasp!) work! The subsidies for having children would end. They’d have to pay taxes!

This is what happens when a union based on Federalism and democracy begins to decay; when unbridled liberalism, unfettered idealism, and unrestrained judges come together. Rather than forcing the poor to accomplish something, these three conditions, the Holy Trinity of the Left, come together to form the Deity, the Holy of Leftist Holies, the Nanny State!

No need to get a job, poor man! Come suckle at the breast of the Nanny State!

So what if you’ve had four children by four different men, poor woman? Who cares that none shared your bed for longer than it took for you to conceive, and that none were your husband? Let Nanny State pull you close to her bosom and comfort you, and tell you that you should have high self-esteem, that you’re worthy to sit in mainstream society with the other good, decent people who actually work, marry, and pay taxes!

Robert Tracinski of The Intellectual Activist has written an excellent article on the Nanny State, well worth a few minutes of your time.

In his article, Mr. Tracinski makes the case that Hurricane Katrina was not a natural disaster — it was man-made. Now before you global-warming types fire up the dance music, read what the man has to say:

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

He points out the correlation between poor neighborhoods and high crime, then delivers the coup de grace:

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit—but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals—and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep—on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. In a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters—not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

Everyone has either seen the pictures or read the stories — looters taking TV sets, jewelry, designer clothing, anything they could get their hands on while the flood waters were rising! Food I can understand. Guns, flashlights, battery operated radios. All very valuable in a city ravaged by nature, and things that would not have withstood flood waters for very long, anyway. But jewelry? Top-of-the-line TV sets and stereos? These were taken by people with an entitlement mentality.

“Why shouldn’t I take it? The man has kept these things from us for too long, now it’s our turn!”

The man hasn’t kept you from getting that free education you’re entitled to through high school, has he? The man hasn’t forced that crack into your body so that he can turn you into a 21^st century Kunta Kinte, has he? He didn’t superglue that gun into your hand and use you as a human ventriloquist’s dummy when you knocked off that liquor store, did he? No, these are things that the poor are doing to themselves all by themselves. They will continue to do them until the end of time.

Now for the part that liberals won’t read. I’m all for private charity. I contribute to help the poor, but I contribute to charities that educate people, that help people become self-sustaining.

I had a Democrat tell me recently that Jesus said we were to give to the poor. He was advocating continuation of the Nanny/Welfare State. He noted Jesus’ many charitable acts, and said that we should do the same.

I agreed, but I noted that Jesus and His Father were free-will kind of guys, and that while they want us to do certain things, even command us to do certain things, that they do not give one person permission to take the money from another person’s hand and give it to the poor. It’s an individual act that is advocated, not a collective one.

Take that cob and shuck it!

TD