FDR was Right!

I never thought I would ever utter the phrase that “Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was right”! But I did when I read what he said during his 1935 State of the Union Address: "The lessons of history ... show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit." We need to look no further than the protests going on at state capitols for evidence.

I have to admit, in the past I have blamed FDR for introducing social policies in America, but he should actually only receive a small portion of the blame. FDR merely expanded and built upon the social programs introduced by Herbert Hoover. And let’s not forget the impact that Woodrow Wilson policies had a few decades earlier. But the real blame for making the United States a nation dependent on government entitlements belongs to Lyndon Johnson’s (LBJ) Great Society. Yes, FDR started the first major entitlement – Social Security. However, Social Security is an entitlement program that most Americans earn by contributing into the plan during their working years. And it was future congressional government’s actions that have made Social Security less solvent and in danger of becoming extinct.

Under LBJ the wave of entitlement programs began: low income housing projects, food stamps, and Medicare all started under LBJ’s domestic policies he called The Great Society. LBJ created social programs where people can receive funding for doing absolutely nothing and contributing nothing positive towards society. And it is no coincidence that these programs started at the same time the Civil Rights Act was passed. The impact of government dependence has been monumental on African-Americas (according to Starr Parker’s Coalition of Urban Renewal):

60 percent of black children grow up in fatherless homes.
800,000 black men are in jail or prison.
70 percent of black babies are born to unwed mothers.
Over 300,000 black babies are aborted annually.
50 percent of new AIDS cases are in the black community.
Almost half of young black men in America's cities are neither working nor in school.

Today, over one in three people are dependent on government handouts or subsidies to survive daily and African-Americans are the most affected. The above statistics are mindboggling and it only proves that LBJ’s Great Society and his domestic policies were a huge failure and FDR was right. Millions of Americans are addicted to entitlements and the consequences have been cataclysmic. Entitlements are responsible for destroying families, personal responsibility, and the educational system. Entitlements remove any incentive for people to improve their lives or their surroundings. The end result is a growing poverty rate with the poor segregated to inner slums fighting disease and crime. This is not a pretty picture.