Intractable Problems

As anyone who tours the Montana blogs knows, I spend most of my wasteable time at right wing places, engaging in debate with the likes of “Max Bucks”, Craig Moore, Dad, “Jerry Chung”, aka “Rook”, “Knight”, and “Checker”. There’s also Rob Natelson and Steve somebody-or-other (“Rabid Sanity”), Carole (Missoulapolis), Shackleford (MtPundit), Gregg Smith, and the late-great Craig Sprout of mt.politics.net. And Budge. Big Swede and rightsaidfred are always interesting. And there are others I am missing but do not intend to slight. It seems there are far more conservative blogs these days than liberal, and far more conservatives posting than liberals.

Usually the exchanges are testy, and I get called names, and occasionally resort to saying things I wish I hadn’t. Most times I maintain my cool, but from the other side, it appears as though I am thoughtless and dogmatic. In the end, I regret those exchanges that bring out my worst and their worst. (I do, however, love to taunt Budge. He gets very insulting. Yesterday I stopped at “incoherent drool”. I’d bet he said something interesting after that, but I have no idea what. He lost me.)

They will not change. A few of them are thoughtful – they know who they are. But for the most part, it does no good to be kind to them. And that is a shame, because the thoughtful conservatives have a lot to offer us, and we need to listen to them. I’ve been around liberals enough to know that they can be light and feathery, and not hard-nosed enough to deal with the world as it really exists. I’m not so dogmatic as I appear, but I do react to dogma with counter-dogma, often knowing I am merely being a contrarian. To yield an inch is to lose a yard.

Anyway, it occurred to me this morning that it would not hurt to pick on an idea taken from a right-wing perspective, and give it due respect. The one that instantly comes to mind is the notion that to give people unearned benefits destroys their individual initiative, and makes them wards of the state.

It’s true. We’ve all seen it. In its worst form, it is the single mother, unwedded or abandoned and irresponsible, kept away from her kids by the requirement that she work a job that doesn’t cover the cost of childcare, which thereby becomes a public expense. She has us over a barrel – her uterus is a claim on the public treasury. The kids are victims who will soon make their own claims on us. The whole situation is tragic.

Then there is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which was revamped during the 1990’s into a pure welfare program. The EITC started out as a means of refunding payroll tax to low income workers, but has become something else. It is heavily weighted towards people with kids. Again, at its root, is irresponsible reproduction – people who cannot afford kids having kids. It’s troubling.

I see the point of the other side of that debate. I don’t know what to do about it – raise more responsible adults? Birth control? Mandatory sterilization? We tread a line between individual freedom and tyranny. Liberals tend to glamorize these people as victims, when we have all met them. That slice of humanity that I have dealt with is often drugged or liquored up, useless to themselves and to us. The conservatives are right about them, and the liberals too soft to give them the tough love they need.

That is just one of many points on which conservatives are right, and yet … they don’t have a solution for us. Neither does our side. It is seemingly intractable, though deep down many conservatives simply want them to perish. I have tended lately to fall back on something offered years ago by William F. Buckley – that it is not a bad thing to feed these people, but don’t feed them too well. Instead of food stamps used to buy starchy and sugary processed foods that make us all fat, give them access to basic foodstuffs. Let them eat, but not enjoy it too much. To the degree possible, resist giving them cash. They usually don’t spend it well. Liquor stores often benefit.

And about having all them kids? Birth control on every corner. Free condoms, pills, shots in the arm – whatever it takes. We can’t stop them from copulating, but we can make it less productive.

Anyway, I depart the conservative philosophy regarding indigents when it comes to two things that can help lift them out of both moral and physical poverty – education and health care.

Some other time.