Henry Dampier

On the outer right side of history

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December 21, 2014 by henrydampier 13 Comments

Entitlement Programs As Nation-State Glue

State-national entitlement programs compete with the family as an organizing principle.

For nation-states to triumph over linguistic, ethnic, and religious differences, they had to outlaw the existing competitive economic, education, cultural, and social systems to replace them with centralized, progressive programs.

It is totally zany for conservatives to claim that they are both ‘pro-family’ (whatever that means) and in favor of these types of programs, because those programs were and are intended to weaken the hands of religious organizations, families, and ethnic organizations.

In FDR’s announcement speech to the public in 1935, he said:

Today a hope of many years’ standing is in large part fulfilled. The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.

This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.

We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.

This is portrayed as if it were an unavoidable fact, like the weather, that the centralized industrial system out-competed the older system of home economics in a vacuum. It was more the long result of a series of ‘reforms’ and social changes intended to bring about that end to create  a more rational, egalitarian society. State-managed electrification, collectivization of agriculture, and many other socialistic and quasi-socialistic policies were pursued both during the New Deal and before that time with the express goal of melting down what had been a rather diverse country into a single nationalistic unit, bound together through national compulsory education and into a highly regulated workforce.

What really happened during the New Deal tends to be papered over so much that almost everything written about it for contemporary consumption is a lie.

The suite of entitlement programs and regulations put into place before, during, and after the New Deal have all been dedicated to the weakening of the family system and the strengthening of the nation-state and the corporate systems that feeds resources and manpower into it in a rationalized fashion.

What this has generated is a society in which parents do not feel as if they own their children. They instead prepare their children for success in the corporate state, rather than preparing them to bring honor and wealth to their families. This cuts people off from their own long term interests, and cuts parents off from the long term interests of their children. The concept of self-ownership becomes fuzzy in the minds of the masses, because they were never really owned by anyone — from cradle to grave, they go through bureaucratic systems, under no-one’s control.

No one is the keeper of anyone else, so the people tend to bounce around aimlessly, without much direction, degrading with each successive generation, as people turn to self-destruction rather than caring for the culture. Because it’s not their culture, it’s just some place in which they find themselves, in which they are tenants and never owners.

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Filed Under: Economics

Comments

  1. Steve Johnson says

    December 21, 2014 at 12:31 pm

    The New Deal is inextricably bound with soft money.

    Soft money is a full communist revolution. Everything that’s for sale in a currency that someone can print at will is owned by the organization that has the right to print the currency.

    Once the government owns everything they start slowly consolidating – do it quickly and chaos and death are the results. FDR’s communists were more civilized than the Russian or Chinese communists. The New Deal is simply buying peace with a cut of the proceeds from nationalizing literally everything.

    The New Deal doesn’t exist without soft money and when you have soft money the New Deal is inevitable.

    Reply
    • henrydampier says

      December 21, 2014 at 12:56 pm

      I agree, but perhaps it’d be more accurate to say that the issuer has the option to buy everything. This option has no expiry date and an arbitrary strike price.

      This creates an illusion of property rights, which prevents some of the destructive effects of outright Communism of the Lenin/Mao flavors.

      Reply
  2. Exfernal says

    December 21, 2014 at 1:37 pm

    Parent equals owner? Not merely guardian?

    Reply
    • henrydampier says

      December 21, 2014 at 1:38 pm

      Is a guardian under current law, was an owner under previous legal regime, ought to be owners again.

      Reply
      • Exfernal says

        December 22, 2014 at 4:51 am

        ‘Owning’ includes the right to destroy. Do you notice the implications?

        Reply
        • 1irradiatedwatson says

          December 22, 2014 at 4:22 pm

          Not necessarily. You can have ownership without the right to kill a child. I doubt many parents want to kill their children or let other children be killed.

          Reply
          • Exfernal says

            December 23, 2014 at 5:16 am

            What is the number of abortions per year? That might give you some idea.

            It’s not ownership, then. Definitions matter.

          • 1irradiatedwatson says

            December 23, 2014 at 8:16 am

            They do if we simply ban infantscide ( is there a more general word for children appropriate?) abortion would be covered. That is if we are going strictly by definition. However for every definition there is a half life for which unless maintained will loose half its meaning due to leftward drift and sophistry. There are good rules but no law can protect us without enforcement and decimination of orthodoxy.

  3. Peter Blood says

    December 21, 2014 at 2:40 pm

    Franklinstein Roosevelt’s creation haunts us.

    Reply
  4. Dave says

    December 25, 2014 at 6:45 pm

    We see the same thing in the Sopranos, where tradition demands that the new kid treat all the older mobsters to expensive dinners night after night. The Miami Dolphins offer a real-life example of the same.

    This custom cements the loyalty of new recruits; not allowed to save a dime of their earnings, they’re entirely dependent on the organization, and their membership in it, lasting until they become the pampered old fogies.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Entitlement Programs As Nation-State Glue | Reaction Times says:
    December 21, 2014 at 2:31 pm

    […] Source: Henry Dampier […]

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  2. Lightning Round -2014/12/24 | Free Northerner says:
    December 24, 2014 at 3:02 am

    […] Entitlements as nation-state glue. […]

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  3. Lightning Round -2014/12/24 says:
    December 24, 2014 at 7:42 am

    […] Entitlements as nation-state glue. […]

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