
In the preceding post, I described how I felt the Republican Party had failed America. In this post, I will describe how the Democratic Party has done the same. They too have done almost irreparable damage to our country, economy and security. They just did it from a different “perspective”.
The Democrats purport to be the party of progress, the party that will take care of the “common person”, and the ones that will eliminate want and punish greed. Yet, their methods of taking care of the poor and sick have hurt everyone, including those they say they are working to help.
The Democrats most massive failure is in social programs. Now it is good to want to help the poor, sick and needy. The problem is HOW the Democrats have gone about doing this. They do not set up programs for people to help themselves. Instead they have set up programs where everyone else is FORCED to provide for others.
The first massive social program was Social Security. This was set up to help poor older people who had no one to take care of them. But instead of creating savings programs through which people would fund their own retirement, they took from others and gave to people who had put nothing in. They created a massive Ponzi scheme for the elderly which will eventually bankrupt everyone (let alone leaving the elderly to starve when the program collapses).
Next up was the War on Poverty. This was a massive effort to provide for the poor. It was supposed to lift them out of poverty. They funded this effort through massive government borrowing. It has had little effect, as the same percentage of people in the country are below the poverty line as when these efforts started decades ago. But now, thanks to the massive borrowing, governments at every level are now saddled with debt they cannot ever repay.
Both efforts also had very toxic unintended consequences. Social Security destroyed the extended family in the United States, as everyone now expects the government to take care of their elderly. The War on Poverty both destroyed the incentives to work (you can now be idle and get enough to survive), and the families of the poor, as men have deserted them, knowing the government will feed and house them.
The Democrats believe that government is or can be the solution to any problem. They use the government’s almost unlimited ability to borrow money to pay for whatever program is needed to fix the issue. This is literally destroying democracy, as voters now vote for whoever promises them the most money. It creates massively expensive bureaucracies, and of course causes government debt to go through the stratosphere.
They also are complicit in destroying what little of democracy is left by using the courts to bypass the voters. Democratic judicial appointees feel that since they know better than the voters, they can create laws without debate or elections.
And then there is the problem of the Double Standard. I don’t exactly know where this comes from, but it certainly exists. The Liberals have a strict standard of conduct that everyone else is supposed to adhere to. But they have a very different standard for their friends. It seems that you are in trouble for what you do if you are their enemy. But espouse their views (better yet, get elected because of those views), and you can actually get away with the most abhorrent behavior. Think the Clintons.
What to Do
It is a good thing to want to help the poor, the sick and the elderly. We should all be engaged in trying to help others. It is the right thing to do. We have a basic human responsibility to help others.
The problem with the Democrats is HOW they are trying to do this. Their misguided efforts have bankrupted our cities, states and nation. Their programs have had horrible unintended consequences. They have destroyed incentives to work. They have seriously damaged or outright destroyed the family structures of those they were supposed to be helping. They have created massive bureaucracies and regulation that are strangling economic activity.
We need to find ways to help others without this kind of damage. There does need to be a safety net. But it needs to not enable the abandonment of families and responsibility, while enabling drug use, idleness and a mentality of entitlement. A new social solution MUST be found. One based on personal responsibility and action.