Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 13. Disassociation.

December 12, 2025

From the Casper Star Tribune.

The Democratic bill to extend the credits failed.

Senate blocks Obamacare tax subsidy extension, all but ensuring spikes for Wyoming consumers: Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming called tax subsidy extension a “disaster” and lobbied for a Republican health savings account proposal that also failed.

So did a moronic Republic bill for health savings accounts. That was no sort of plan.

The evidence is too well established to ignore.  A national health care system needs to be established and frankly it would not be that difficult.  It'll be interesting to see if this brings it about, as the populist contingent that opposes it, including here in the state, is about to lose its insurance.  This is, quite frankly, a disaster.

It's a disaster that the GOP hopes will kill off the AHCA and there really isn't any serious proposals to replace it. They want it dead, as it's "socialism", even though it isn't.  The Health Savings Account concept was just pablum and everyone is well aware that it'd achieve nothing at all.

Which brings me back to this point.  The difference between right wing populism and left wing populism is nearly non existent.  The ox that will end up being gored here is that of the street level right wing populist, who can be, and in some instances was, left wing populist.  

Speaking of average folks:

Also from the CST.

December 13, 2025

December 14, 2025

The Federal government terminated the collective bargaining status for the union that covers TSA officers, the American Federation of Government Employees, as to TAS officers.

The union, which covers the employees of other agencies as well, has over 300,000 members, probably none of whom will caste a vote for the GOP next year.

We also have Chuck Gray sounding like a broken record:

Chuck Gray: I Will Continue To Fight Woke Wind Energy Projects

Gray's in a bit of a spot as he'd hoped to use the Secretary of State's office as a springboard to something else.  It's not looking like that will pay off, as Bill Barlow is clearly in the lead for the Governor's office and Gray can't think of anything to say that doesn't sound like it's from the junior edition of the MAGA playlist, which is rapidly becoming a set of moly oldies.  To make matters worse for him, he's now so acclimated to absurd name calling that he can't stop it, as in:

We should be deeply troubled by the efforts of Gov. Gordon and other insider politicians to jam through woke wind projects that violate so many of our core principles as Wyomingites. 

"Woke wind projects"?  

I know what he means, of course, which is that as the Federal Government backed wind under Biden, and as global warming is a fib, and as Joe Biden is responsible for all of the ills in society, it's the dreaded evil "woke".  Gray has used this sort of rhetoric so often, however, that if a cafe burns his toast I'm sure that he reflexively calls the short order cook a liberal, let wing woke Marxist.

Gray's career in Wyoming politics is probably shot.  Barlow will get the Governor's office, Hageman won't run for it as she knows that, so she'll keep her office, Lummis is the Wyoming sphinx, rarely saying anything, and she'll keep her office.  Gray will be lucky if he doesn't draw opposition and lose his.

On wind, all the fossil fuel true believers were dead set against it but now oil is hovering around $60.00 and it appears that the Federal Government might be pushing to depress the price.  A well placed GOP politician told me the other day that the administration wants it at $30.00/bbl next year, which would wipe out domestic production and throw Wyoming into an oilfield depression.

On a different note:  

Cattle Ranchers Revive Nebraska Town With Bold Producer-Owned Beef Plant

December 16, 2025

US payrolls fell by 105,000 people in October, and then rebounded to add 64,000 in November.

Sort of a mixed message there, assuming that such figures coming out of the US government are trustworthy.

Cont:

Well, apparently those who are schooled in this kind of data view this as a pretty negative jobs report.  The economy is cooling, and the unemployment rate is up.

December 17, 2025

Feds, Wyoming greenlight new helium plant, among world’s largest: The Dry Piney helium production and CO2 sequestration project would rival ExxonMobil's neighboring Shute Creek plant near LaBarge.

Wyoming Aims To Turn EV Charging Into A New Post-Pump Marketplace

December 21, 2025

‘A Gut Punch’: Nebraska Town Shell-Shocked By Tyson Closing Huge Beef Plant

 

‘A Gut Punch’: Nebraska Town Shell-Shocked By Tyson Closing Huge Beef Plant

December 22, 2025.

Jim Beam is ceasing production from its principal facility for all of 2026.

The price of oil in Wyoming today:  $43.73.  Below the price for further exploration. . . by a huge margin.

December 23, 2025

Rogue Brewing in Oregon has shut down and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

December 24, 2025

Headline in the CST:

Gordon awards $100 million

in matching funds to

BWXT nuclear fuel facility

And the story:

Gordon awards $100M to northern Wyoming nuclear fuel manufacturer: The state-backed grant will support BWXT's proposed TRISO fuel manufacturing facility in Gillette.

December 25, 2025

Wyoming Oil And Gas Operators Cheer Delay Of Biden-Era 1,400% Bond Rate Hike

The price of oil today is $58.0/bbl.  Wyoming's oil is at $43.90.

December 28, 2025

The news that so many simply refuse to believe:

2025 is projected to be Wyoming’s second worst coal production year

As part of this:

Wyoming coal is projected to have its second worst production year since its peak in 2008. Economists say the decline will likely continue, putting the state’s economic future on shaky ground.

We've discussed this trend line before, but to put it bluntly, it's going to decline into oblivion.

December 30, 2025

Lack of snow and economic uncertainty foretell a grim outlook for winter resorts

Related threads:

Seemingly missed in the story of prices at the pump being down is that the rig count is down too. And the coming economic storm in Wyoming.

Labels: Coal, deflation, Economics, Ignorance, OPEC, Petroleum, Russo Ukrainian War, Taxes, trends, Venezuela, Wyoming Freedom Caucus

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 12. Don't look . . . everything's just fine edition.

Labels: Agriculture, Economics, Food, Health, Predictions, technology, Technology is ruining everything, Wyoming (Gillette), Wyoming Business Council, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

If you are an Apostolic Christian, and aren't worried yet, you ought to be. Or maybe not. Or maybe.

The Defense Department hosted a Christmas service at the Pentagon.

Now, if you are an Apostolic Christian, as the overwhelming majority of Christians around the world are, or if you are a member of a Protestant denomination that is closely based on the Catholic Church, or which even thinks that they are part of it, this service will come across very strangely.  But, as I've noted before, this is a Protestant country and a Protestant county in which the strains of Puritanism are deep.

The services of the Apostolic Faiths, i.e., the Catholics and the Orthodox, go back to the very origins of Christianity.  The Didache was written within a couple of decades of the Crucifiction and it shows Christians doing what Apostolic Christians do right now, which isn't a surprise to Apostolic Christians but which can come as a rude shock to Protestants.  The writings of the Church Fathers do the same.  If you read these text and remain a Protestant, while cutting a little slack for High Church Anglicans and conservative Lutherans, it's just a wilful decision to ignore the first 1,500 years of Christian practice.

But most people don't read those things and so they're going with what they learned as kids, or what they've sort of picked up, no matter how in error or ignorant it may be.  John Calvin, who influenced the Puritans, was flat out demonstrably wrong (and frankly not a nice guy) but most people don't know that if they're in one of the churches influenced by him, and for that matter they don't even know who John Calvin was.

The Puritans, because they were religious dissenters from the Church of England, which had militantly broken off from the Catholic Church in order that King Henry VIII could pursue a string of hopefully fertile bedmates, was not only pretty ignorant, but obstinately so in many ways, as it had a history of fighting with the Established Church.  The Church of Scotland was somewhat as well, particularly in its American form.  All of these churches have declined enormously in Europe while Catholicism has increased, reclaiming lost ground, but in the US their descendants are pretty numerous and strong.

Most Protestants aren't "Evangelical Protestants", but Evangelical Protestantism is really easy for people who want to be Christians without a whole bunch of Christian theology, want to escape the personally difficult aspects of Christian theology, or who just know that there's truth in Christianity and don't know where to go.  The do it yourselfism in them is pretty strong, and some, but not all, of them are pretty good at pointing out the sins of others while simply ignoring their own favorite  ones.  There's a host of ministers in this camp that are personally wealthy or who are married and divorced, and who have even engaged in affairs.  Flat out ignoring the Christian injunction against divorce and remarriage is pretty much the rule in most Protestant communities and it obviously is in some Evangelical ones.  Paula White is on her third husband, for example.  Joyce Meyer on her second.  Missouri pastor Rich Tidwell is a polygamist.

The point isn't to debate on all these topics, setting aside polygamy, Protestant denominations do not have, I think, the process of annulment, which can be controversial in the Catholic Church, and their ministers do not take vows of poverty, but rather the pick and chose nature of things is a problem, and it'll turn on Catholics and is already starting to.

The New Apostolic Reformation is an aggressive backer of Donald Trump and its openly a backer of Americanism.  Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, is clearly aligned with the movement, and it's pretty clear that Secretary of Defense Hegseth falls in this camp.  Hegesth is practically the poster boy for ignorance in this category as he's festooned himself with tattoos that recall the Crusades while not realizing at all that Crusaders would have regarded him as a heretic.  But there he is, all emblazoned with sayings and symbols that properly belong to the Apostolic faiths, while living in what they'd all regard as an irregular marriage.

The same week that the Pentagon service occured Chip Roy took a direct swing at Catholics.

A lot of good Americans give their money to Catholic charities thinking they're helping people, and it turns out they're a part of a vast leftist network that is being used to undermine our country. 

Whether it's the open borders, Soros DAs, Arabella, or the 'Islamification' of Texas and this country—it's organized, and this is one example. Look at the Medicaid fraud up in Minneapolis. It was going to Somalis, and it was literally billions of dollars.

This administration is rooting it out; Congress needs to do more. That's why I called for a special select committee to follow the money of these radical groups. We need to do it.

Roy, who lives in Austin Texas, is a Baptist, something that isn't surprising both because the Baptist are a large Protestant religion in the United States and because Texas is part of the "Bible Belt" where the Southern Baptist are particularly strong.

The Baptists are not part of the New Apostolic Reformation as a rule and have a very large set of differing beliefs on different topics. The reason to note this, however, is that Roy's statement really brings out a certain strain of Protestant Anti Catholicism that's very deep in the country's history.  Setting aside any one thing he's complaining about, a strain of it is that Catholic charities don't seem to care very much where people come from.

And that's because Catholics aren't not supposed to view the world that way.

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. 2 Corinthians 10:3 They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven

Letter to Diognetus.

For many years, the really strong Protestant religions in the US were the "mainline" Protestant faiths, of which the Episcopal Church was the strongest.  None of the Mainline Protestant Churches was friendly with the Apostolic Churches, but they ironically all had connections to it, with the Presbyterian Church having the fewest.  In truth, in spite of the Black Legends of the Reformation they'd spread, they all worried about how they were viewed by the Catholic Church, accepting large elements of the Church's views as correct, and particularly worried about whether they had Apostolic Succession, strongly suspecting themselves that they did not.  People have spoken much about the decline of Christianity in the West, but they've missed two elements of that story to a significant degree, one being that the Catholic church was persistently attacked by Protestant governments during and after the Reformation, and that this yielded to attacks by left wing secular governments thereafter.  The Catholic Church nonetheless endured in spite of all of it, and its' rebounding from that assault.  The Mainline Protestant Churches, however, are simply dying of their own accord.

All along there's been a strain of loosely organized Protestant churches that fall outside of the Mainline churches.  The Mainline Protestant Churches did not worry much about them, but as time has gone on, and the impacts of the death of the Reformation and the cultural revolutions of the Baby Boomers have played out, those churches have grown and are particularly infused with the American Civil Religion, which many barely churched Americans are as well. The New Apostolic Reformation is just a sliver of that set of beliefs, but Apostolic Christians should be concerned.  The Apostolic Faiths are growing in the US right now as people turn towards the truth, but this administration is infused with the NAR which leads to events like this.  Recognizing the Christian origins of the United States is fine, and saying something prayerful at the Pentagon in this season is as well.  But a performance such as this, combined with rumblings from somebody like Roy, should worry us.  Christianity is not an American thing.

Or, perhaps, something else is going on.

The Apostolic Faiths are growing and converts from Protestantism are part of the reason why.  The Mainline Protestant Churches are dying.  Evangelicalism remains strong, but things like this show the marked contrast with the Ancient Faith.  This may all be part of the death of the Reformation playing out before us.

There remains a danger in all of this, however.  There are prominent Apostolic Christians in the National Conservative/Christian Nationalist camp.  People like R. R. Reno, Rod Dreher and Kevin Roberts are founding members, and J. D. Vance is the most prominent politician who travels in that camp.  The views that the backers of people like Mike Johnson and Pete Hegseth hold are not necessarily friendly towards Apostolic Christians at all.  While people in the Reno/Dreher/Roberts camp may rejoice as the seeming defense of Christian values by the administration (and I'm not sure that at least Reno and Dreher, the latter of whom has declared Trump unstable, hold that view), it's making common cause with people who are either inherently hostile to the Apostolic Faiths or, in the case of Trump himself, deeply immoral.  Being such a fellow traveler rarely works out and we'll be turned on.

Related threads:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 103d edition. The tragic co-opting of death and politics.

Labels: Apostolic Christianity, Catholic, Charlie Kirk, Christian Nationalism, Christianity, Commentary, Fascism, National Conservatism, Populism, Protestant, religion, The Horst Wessel Effect, The Kennedy/Guevara Effect, Weapons

Donald Trump and wolves in sheep's clothing. Attacking actual Christian beliefs and practices. The White House Faith Office and Paula Michelle White-Cain. We warned you.

Labels: Apostolic Christianity, Commentary, Donald Trump, Mainline Protestant, New Apostolic Reformation, Protestant, religion, Sunday Morning Scene, The Second Trump Administration, You heard it here first

An Appeal To Heaven. The 2024 Wyoming Primary

Labels: 2020s, 2024 Election, American Civil Religion, Apostolic Christianity, Catholic, Christian Nationalism, Christianity, National Conservatism, New Apostolic Reformation, Populism, Protestant, Wyoming

The End of the Reformation II

Labels: Apostolic Christianity, Baby Boom Generation, British Empire, Catholic, Christianity, Colonialism, Martin Luther, Protestant, religion, Synchronicity, The Reformation, WASP, Western Society

Confusing politics with religion.

Labels: Apostolic Christianity, Christianity, Protestant, Yeoman's Self Centered Razor

Friday, December 14, 1945. Tragedy and ethnic Germans, the LDS and conscription.

As its copyrighted and I don't have permission to post it, I'll merely note it, it was of German women in their children, formerly of Lodz, waiting for a train in Berlin with hopes of going to the west.  One of the children is sick, and died during the photo session.

The First President of the LDS issued a postwar statement on the draft to Utah's Congressional delegation.

Press reports have for some months indicated that a determined effort is in the making to establish in this country a compulsory universal military training designed to draw into military training and service the entire youth of the nation. We had hoped that mature reflection might lead the proponents of such a policy to abandon it. We have felt and still feel that such a policy would carry with it the gravest dangers to our Republic.

It now appears that the proponents of the policy have persuaded the Administration to adopt it, in what on its face is a modified form. We deeply regret this, because we dislike to find ourselves under the necessity of opposing any policy so sponsored. However, we are so persuaded of the rightfulness of our position, and we regard the policy so threatening to the true purposes for which this Government was set up, as set forth in the great Preamble to the Constitution, that we are constrained respectfully to invite your attention to the following considerations:

1. By taking our sons at the most impressionable age of their adolescence and putting them into army camps under rigorous military discipline, we shall seriously endanger their initiative thereby impairing one of the essential elements of American citizenship. While on its face the suggested plan might not seem to visualize the army camp training, yet there seems little doubt that our military leaders contemplate such a period, with similar recurring periods after the boys are placed in the reserves.

2. By taking our boys from their homes, we shall deprive them of parental guidance and control at this important period of their youth, and there is no substitute for the care and love of a mother for a young son.

3. We shall take them out of school and suffer their minds to be directed in other channels, so that very many of them after leaving the army, will never return to finish their schooling, thus over a few years materially reducing the literacy of the whole nation.

4. We shall give opportunity to teach our sons not only the way to kill but also, in too many cases, the desire to kill, thereby increasing lawlessness and disorder to the consequent upsetting of the stability of our national society. God said at Sinai, “Thou shalt not kill.”

5. We shall take them from the refining, ennobling, character-building atmosphere of the home, and place them under a drastic discipline in an environment that is hostile to most of the finer and nobler things of home and of life.

6. We shall make our sons the victims of systematized allurements to gamble, to drink, to smoke, to swear, to associate with lewd women, to be selfish, idle, irresponsible save under restraint of force, to be common, coarse, and vulgar, all contrary to and destructive of the American home.

7. We shall deprive our sons of any adequate religious training and activity during their training years, for the religious element of army life is both inadequate and ineffective.

8. We shall put them where they may be indoctrinated with a wholly un-American view of the aims and purposes of their individual lives, and of the life of the whole people and nation, which are founded on the ways of peace, whereas they will be taught to believe in the ways of war.

9. We shall take them away from all participation in the means and measures of production to the economic loss of the whole nation.

10. We shall lay them open to wholly erroneous ideas of their duties to themselves, to their family, and to society in the matter of independence, self-sufficiency, individual initiative, and what we have come to call American manhood.

11. We shall subject them to encouragement in a belief that they can always live off the labors of others through the government or otherwise.

12. We shall make possible their building into a military caste which from all human experience bodes ill for that equality and unity which must always characterize the citizenry of a republic.

13. By creating an immense standing army, we shall create to our liberties and free institutions a threat foreseen and condemned by the founders of the Republic, and by the people of this country from that time till now. Great standing armies have always been the tools of ambitious dictators to the destruction of freedom.

14. By the creation of a great war machine, we shall invite and tempt the waging of war against foreign countries, upon little or no provocation; for the possession of great military power always breeds thirst for domination, for empire, and for a rule by might not right.

15. By building a huge armed establishment, we shall belie our protestations of peace and peaceful intent and force other nations to a like course of militarism, so placing upon the peoples of the earth crushing burdens of taxation that with their present tax load will hardly be bearable, and that will gravely threaten our social, economic, and governmental systems.

16. We shall make of the whole earth one great military camp whose separate armies, headed by war-minded officers, will never rest till they are at one another’s throats in what will be the most terrible contest the world has ever seen.

17. All the advantages for the protection of the country offered by a standing army may be obtained by the National Guard system which has proved so effective in the past and which is unattended by the evils of entire mobilization.

Responsive to the ancient wisdom, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it,’ obedient to the divine message that heralded the birth of Jesus the Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world, ‘. . . on earth peace, good will toward men,’ and knowing that our Constitution and the Government set up under it were inspired of God and should be preserved to the blessing not only of our own citizenry but, as an example, to the blessing of all the world, we have the honor respectfully to urge that you do your utmost to defeat any plan designed to bring about the compulsory military service of our citizenry. Should it be urged that our complete armament is necessary for our safety, it may be confidently replied that a proper foreign policy, implemented by an effective diplomacy, can avert the dangers that are feared. What this country needs and what the world needs, is a will for peace, not war. God will help our efforts to bring this about.

Respectfully submitted, GEO. ALBERT SMITH, J. REUBEN CLARK, JR., DAVID O. MCKAY, First Presidency.

I actually ran across this on Reddit, where it has been posted by an unhappy former Mormon.  It might be noted, of course, that at that age a large number of Mormons go on missions, which is an effort to consolidate them in their faith, so there was no doubt some reason for Mormon's to be concerned.   While I've heard it claimed that there's no pressure for them to do so, as a demographic, by my observation, they tend to marry young as well, which relates to one of the things noted in the letter, maybe more than one.

Still, the points made are interesting, and not necessarily invalid.  Indeed, almost every point raised in this letter is correct.

There is actually a lot to unpack here, and my own views on this have changed back and forth over the years.  In 1945, when this letter was written, there had only been a single instance of conscription into the Federal Army during peacetime in U.S. history, and that came right before World War Two. There was a history of mandatory militia service, but that had fallen by the wayside after the Civil War.  

Also of note, the National Guard, in peacetime, still did not receive Federal basic training in 1945.  Entry level soldiers were trained by their units by older NCO's delegated that task.  Given this, the nature of the training was always local, but it obviously varied in other ways depending upon who was delivering it.  In the case of this letter, the author could be assured that enlisting young men would have been trained by older soldiers of a like mind, with therefore much of the societal dangers noted avoided.  I'm not sure when the training system actually changed, but I suspect it was by the very late 1940s or certainly by the 1950s.  By the time I was in the Guard the Guard was incredibly integrated into the Regular Army, which is even more the case today.  Enlisting men received regular Army basic and advanced training, and were in the Army when they received it.

When I was younger, I held the view that conscription was a bad thing, save in times of war, as it forced a person to serve against their will.  That's a less developed point than the set of points noted above, but there is a point to it.  Having said that, what I don't think I appreciated earlier is the dangers of a large standing Army, which is why the US had a militia system for defense in the first place. We're seeing a lot of those dangers come into fruition now.  That's not directly related to conscription, it might be noted, but it somewhat is as we have a large, all volunteer, armed forces, which inevitably leads to a sort of military class.  Armed forces with conscripts are much less likely do to that, and therefore they make a much more democratic force that's much less likely to act as praetorian guards for a would be dictator.  

Additionally, as I've grown older I've noted that there's a distinct difference between people who served when asked, and those who avoided it.  Our narcissist in chief in Washington D.C., who avoided serving due to shin splits, is a good example. Donald Trump would have benefited enormously from two years as an enlisted man in the military.  But it's not just him, I've noted this in a lot of men who found a way not to serve.  Their characters would have been better off if they had.

Last edition:

Thursday, December 13, 1945. Crimes against humanity.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Crimes against humanity, Nazi Germany, War Crimes

Blog Mirror and Pondering: Cassie Craven: Welfare Was Supposed To Be Our Job

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 14^th century meant one’s good fortune, health and exemption from evil. This changed in the 19^th and early 20^th 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.