The Village Is Broke

I read the Nicole Daughhetee column entitled, “It Takes A Village” that was in the Pickens County Courier of April 4^th. The title came from a book of the same name written by Hillary Clinton. Their shared view is children should not only be raised by their parents, but by all the components of society too.

This article got me thinking about what has gone wrong in this country the past four or five decades, and how those with good intentions have bought into big government as the solution to our societal ills.

“It Takes A Village”, sounds wonderful as a book title or in theory. In reality, though, while you, your relatives and your child’s school seek to improve the overall welfare of your children, this is not the primary aim of the rest of society. To get all of society focused on the welfare of your children and to truly create the village Clinton and Daughhetee envision, the government must play an active role in managing society and providing for individuals.

This is bedrock socialism -- society as a whole is responsible for the basic needs of the individual (not the individual himself).

Daughhetee is a self-proclaimed liberal democrat. I read her columns. Clinton is a democrat and had a far left voting record when she was in the US Senate. Not surprisingly, neither realizes socialism failed miserably in the Soviet Union, is crashing down on Europe, and has the United States on a path of insolvency.

Today, the US government or the village’s role in providing for its citizens is unprecedented. Sixty-two million are on Medicaid, 46 million on food stamps, 61 million on Social Security and Social Security Disability, 7 million on unemployment compensation, 47 million on Medicare, and 4.9 million on other state programs.

Despite that, many still suffer from the poverty those programs set out to eliminate. The village will never be able to do enough, when the village is teaching more and more people not to do for themselves. Socialism is destroying our work ethic, especially at the lower levels of the labor force. I worked for a small business. Even with a 12% unemployment rate, it was difficult to find individuals willing to work for minimum wage or just above. I often heard that’s not enough -- I’ll just stay on unemployment.

Plus, the government can no longer afford it. The village is broke. To pay for all these programs, tax rates are now excessive, the national debt is staggering and still growing by leaps and bounds, and the government has to print more and more money to cover the difference. This is strangling job creation, income growth is stagnant and inflation is chewing up pay checks and erasing savings. Government set out to help a few who were truly needy; it is now “helping” too many, and the result is everyone is falling behind. These trends will continue unless our nation changes course.

We all want to help those down and out, but what liberals don’t realize is by giving government a dominate role in the solution, the solution goes way beyond the need and all are hurt in the long-run.

No doubt suicide liberals will continue to push their socialistic belief until the economy tips and it collapses on top of us all. Then, maybe then, they’ll figure out how flawed their belief is. Maybe not.

The question for the rest of us is how do we get our nation out this dilemma where the government or village is broke, but yet a growing number of citizens are becoming dependent on payments from the village?