Let me start off by noting that as a rule, I can't stand Cassie' Craven's op eds. They tend to be in your face unthinking populist, and I also resent (I'm not kidding) the co-opting of a cowboy hat that obviously doesn't fit.
And frankly I don't much like people spouting off about protecting Wyoming or what Wyoming is or was, when they aren't from here. She's from Nebraska, so that's not far off, but Nebraska is not Wyoming.
Well, like some other populist things, or NatCon things, I'll confess that as a real conservative, and for htat matter a distributist agrarian, I find myself occasionally disturbed by a one of their members saying something that taps into something I've said myself. This article by Craven does that:
Cassie Craven: Welfare Was Supposed To Be Our Job
As much as I hate to admit it, and I do hate to admit it, she has a point, although in the typical populist manner, she starts off by saying something cruel to get to the point. Indeed, it basically takes her 40% of her article to quit being an asshole before she gets to the point that 's worth considering, with this paragraph:
Welfare, in the 14th century meant one’s good fortune, health and exemption from evil. This changed in the 19th and early 20th centuries as public assistance became a role the government took over from the private charities, which had historically helped to ensure that people fared well. Welfare was holistic, community-driven and just as much emotional and spiritual as it was physical.
The shift of society away from the church-based and community associations and toward the government was no good for our fellow man. Adding fuel to the fire were the rapid technological advances that made us distant, isolated, and serotonin-addicted.
This has addled people’s ability to engage in real conversation or romance.
Well, she's correct, sort of .
Craven seems to edge up on the point, actually and then wonder off again, being slightly mean spirited once again. She never gets to the bigger point which is that a welfare system that creates semi permanent benefits, run by a bureaucracy, creates dependency, and corrupts. Indeed, that was the huge difference, other than an inability to cover all who really needed help, from modern welfare and pre Great Depression charity.
Support form charitable organizations, and churches, and the like, was always very temporary. And it tended to come with some requirements. State funded welfare tends not to, although the GOP has attempted to insert some. There are work requirements, of course, but it is difficult to tell how much they're winked at as the principles of subsidiarity have not been applied, so there's no real control. In contrast, I know of a situation in which a Church collects directly for the poor and distributes directly to the poor. In doing so, they do ask "are you working?"
And there are more uncomfortable truths as well. Welfare has, ironically, been a major driver in the decline of Western morality, and more particularly, and arguably much more pronounced, American morality.
Prior to the current welfare regime, children were very much the responsibility of both parents, in every fashion. We've discussed this in the context of the Playboy Philosophy and what not, but what was the case, even into the early 1980s, was that people that had children were normally married, and to a large degree, women who became pregnant out of wedlock either married the father or gave the child up for adoption (or after 1973, aborted). Moral decay brought on by the Sexual Revolution, aided by pharmaceuticals, started to erode the two parent family however and in our current age that's pretty pronounced. An African American commentator got in trouble a year or two ago by claiming that some women "married the government", but there's more than a little truth to that. Kids raised in this environment are more subject to abuse by subsequent "boyfriends" of their mother, and are more likely to be raised in poverty and declining morality. It's simply the truth.
That in turn kicks back to society at large. The American lower middle class tends to wade at least knee deep in a sort of moral sewer even while being horrified by those swimming in it. This wasn't the case thirty year or more ago. The trend line isn't good.
So, Cravens has a point.
But how do you end this? She doesn't opine on that, which is the cowardly way out. Indeed nobody, except perhaps for those deep in the Heritage Society, is doing so. What Project 2025 did, apparently, is to suggest an increase in work requirements, which was attempted sort of sub silentio earlier this year. But then, the entire NatCon group in the government right isn't really willing, in general, to admit trying to bring into play any of their policies. They do them all silently while sometimes denying they're doing them at all.
Which is one of the things I really detest about the Trump Administration. It's dishonest. They should simply admit, if they think it, that "welfare is contributing to moral decay and we have to do something about it."
Of course, the problem here is that most Americans really don't want to do anything about the things they claim they do. Bloated Americans who spend Sundays watching the NFL and who are living with their second or third wives or girlfriends might think about going to the megachurch once a month where the pastor is not going to equate their lifestyle with adulterous mortal sin, or preach about the dangers of wealth to their souls, and might bitch about homosexuals and the like even while being just as morally adrift, but they don't really want the responsibility of responsibility.
Of course, save for some, which explains a movement towards cultural conservatism in the young, thereby being proactive in the culture, even if not attempting to be cultural revolutionaries.
