Alexandra York — fwho has a historic concern about people who aren’t as elitist as she is — began her Jan. 23 Newsmax column by complaining:
Historically, Americans have been generous people.
Philanthropic organizations —churches, YWCA-type establishments, Girl and Boy Scout groups, neighborhood committees, wealthy individuals, etc.— took pleasure in helping the genuinely needy by financing everything from colleges and museums right on down to assuring girls had prom dresses and boys had a basketball court. . .or boys had suits and girls had a soccer field.
Then something changed that individually inspired charity.
That something was the U.S. government.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal initiated federal welfare paid for with American taxpayer’s individually earned income.
The 1935 Social Security Act created Old-age pensions, Unemployment insurance, and Aid to dependent children.
Then Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1960s “Great Society” exponentially expanded welfare: Medicare, Medicaid, Food stamps, Housing assistance, and Head Start, all instituting a permanent social policy that became a haven not only for the truly needy as the previous economic emergency-based relief system did but also a permanent social policy for laggards and fraudulent work-the-system persons to live off the wages other working citizens earned.
Lastly, add the Hart-Cellar Act/1965 Immigration and Nationality Act which continues to bring a flow of third world “needy” to our shores.
Government grew into a money-transferring behemoth supplying the never-ending demand for earned money to support the unearned.
Yes, York considers Social Security to be unwarranted “welfare” She then raged that people who weren’t born in America receive government payments:
Topping this well-established national welfare money-transferring machine, federal, state, and local governments are now using taxpayer’s well-earned dollars to support an onslaught of migrants from all over the world who entered this country illegally.
It matters not that some invaders are good people hoping to improve their miserable lives while others are hard-core criminals who escalate crime to appalling atrocities.
They all have broken our laws.
Even though the number of arrivals lessened during the present administration, increasing housing, food, medical services (including dental!), education, and billions — that’s billions — due to grossly massive fraud of taxpayer dollars are spent to (ostensibly) care for law-breaking invaders.
This expenditure added to the already-installed welfare system for American citizens requires serious enquiry as to why American taxpayers don’t question the validity of supporting intruder “needs” for. . . Well, whatever they can get.
York then demands that government stop giving out welfare:
Actually, let’s extend this enquiry into examination of why taxpaying citizens have and continue to accept paying for the welfare of other American citizens.
So! In toto, what principle is driving Americans to accept the notion that they are morally responsible for the welfare of others whoever they are?
Of course, York turns to her favorite selfish “philisopher”:
Twentieth-century novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand explicitly claimed way back in 1961 (“For the New Intellectual”) that the prevailing and faulty morality in the general American public’s mind that allowed them to accept government-forced welfare programs was “altruism” — sacrificing a higher value for a lower value, e.g. helping others at a cost to oneself.
She further asserted that this moral error was largely due to absorbing the 19th Century German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s insistence upon “duty for the sake of duty” aided by the Christian moral ethos of sacrificing for others begun by Christ’s ultimate sacrifice.
This dual detrimental influence once established as a moral necessity, she held, psychologically disabled the public for resistance and enabled the government to achieve its goal of enslaving all concerned under the yolk of vast welfare programs: the welfare recipients beholden to the government because of received succor and the taxpayers forced to pay for that succor by government law.
She, however, importantly distinguished between Kant’s altruistic duty to help others for duty’s sake alone as a moral requirement and the Christian altruistic creed that encouraged helping others as a morally good thing to do, but without the moral requirement; therefore, Kant’s ideas were more lethal because a requirement could and did become legislative law.
Unsurpsingly, York advocates for the end of all welfare:
Given history and the increase of taxpayer money confiscation for illegal invaders adding to an already misguided welfare system that is fraught with fraud, the answer to our original question — Are we morally bound to aid others? — is “No.”
The way to stop it?
Speak out.
Recipients of welfare want our silence because they’re on the take or fraudulent; legislators want our silence because they want to control all taxpayers.
The First Amendment — free speech — is in dire jeopardy right now but still extant.
Use it!
Can we use our First Amendment to ask York why she feels no obligation to help others?