Focus on families who want hand up, not hand-out
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The terrible economy has taken its toll on a number of hard-working Americans and their families. It is incumbent upon each of us to do what we can to assist our fellow citizens in getting back in the American Dream free-market race.
My recommendation is that each of us identify a family down on its luck and do whatever we can to pull that family out of the economic ditch into which it's temporarily slid.
With the holiday season upon us, Americans will be deluged with requests from any number of charities and agencies to help the poor. Mind you, I fully subscribe to Christ's admonition to help the poor, and like everybody I know, we will give and give and give. It is simply the American Way.
What I do not subscribe to is helping those who refuse to help themselves and who constantly look for a hand-out instead of a hand up.
America has a chronic class of self-inflicted poor people — poor because of poor life choices.
Generational poverty
In too many cases, parents pass on these poor values and choices to their children. Poverty then becomes generational, a way of life. Trying to break the cycle of chronic poverty when Fedzilla does whatever it can to sustain it is analogous to trying to melt an iceberg with a match.
An out-of-control orgy of so-called government assistance programs over the past 50 years has been touted as a means of eliminating poverty. The exact opposite has occurred.
In all of its bureaucratic, bloated buffoonery, Fedzilla has exacerbated the problem instead of eliminating it.
The very programs designed to help the disadvantaged instead have stripped them of their work ethic, pride and family structures, and wrecked their communities.
Fedzilla rewarded irresponsibility and encouraged the chronic class of poverty. Nice going.
Crime, drug use, high school dropout rates, single-parent families, destructive lifestyles — all add up to a plague enveloping our cities.
Cultural, social rot
I cannot think of a social or cultural rot that cannot be attributed to Fedzilla's meddling.
No amount of charitable giving is going to reverse this decay. In fact, if we are truly interested in helping the chronically poor, we should immediately stop all local, state and federal funds and programs designed to help the poor.
Once this happens, churches, civic organizations and neighbors should offer a hand to help them out of the poverty hole.
I refuse to throw my hard-earned money into the chronic poor abyss and "hope" it will "change" the condition of the chronic poor.
I know better.
Instead, during the holiday season, my family will do whatever we can to help a family or two temporarily down on its luck. But they must show they can and will help themselves, their community and our country.
We implore you to do the same. That is the barn-raising spirit that built this country.
Happy Thanksgiving, America. May God bestow a special Thanksgiving blessing on America's military warriors and their families.
Ted Nugent is a Waco-based musician and television-show host. Contact him directly at tednugent.com.
