WHOS FEEDING WHO? If you’re not familiar with Screwtape and Wormwood, you might want to look over your shoulder. These mischief makers are ramrodding America’s public policies and maybe yours too. How else can one explain educators condemning inner-city charter schools for poor students while parents conduct street protests against alternative condemnation to public failure academies? Or segregation for African-Americans censored as a bad thing while segregation for American Indians is cheered as a good thing? Or immigration practices encouraging illegal aliens to risk life and limb to steal a piece of the American Dream while ignoring the safe and secure employers funding the scheme? Or doomed-to-fail ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in fantasized connection to America’s freedom? SNAP, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program is no exception. Though authorities enthusiastically dispel abuse assumptions, go to any Craigslist site, drug dealer, or unscrupulous convenience store for lessons in “snapping” for fun and profit. Then note that SNAP expenditures expanded 100 percent during Obama’s first term — twice what we invest in the federal highway program. Food stamps, or more correctly food cards, are the equivalent of a “feed the bears” program for humans and hold the same dangers. Though Screwtape and Wormwood have otherwise convinced the left — people, like bears, make poor pets. Neither is designed to eat out of somebody’s hand. I own a ‘58 Ford diesel tractor. It’s a hard starter. A mechanic told me to try ether. “It will fire that old girl up faster than a new T-Bird,” he said. “Just one thing — if you start using it plan to keep using it. Sluggish diesels get jitter juice dependent real fast.” People and tractors have that in common. Food stamps are really a welfare program for politicians — lazy politicians — finding it easier to throw other people’s money at problems over real solutions. Our recent meltdown can be well traced to a governmental mishmash of inefficiency and manipulation. Free food isn’t a replacement for jobs, a sound economy, and mature leadership supporting us in eating from our own hand. C.S. Lewis, the guy who first fingered Screwtape and Wormwood as Satan’s point men, serves wholesome food for thought, “Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.” Public assistance should be administered like antibiotics — for the right condition, in the right dose, and for the right amount of time. Throwing pills, money, or plastic at people makes us hungrier. Carl Mumpower is a practicing psychologist and a former U.S. congressional candidate and Asheville city council member. Contact him at drmumpower@aol citizen-times/article/20131117/OPINION04/311170012/Further-limit-public-aid
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 12:06:54 +0000
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