This column was originally published in Gallup City Limits in 2013
“He’s tried to make me go to rehab, I won’t go, go, go”—Amy Winehouse
In the science of psychology “enabling” is a form of positive reinforcement or rewarding of destructive behavior. For political conservatives this is merely common sense. Tough love and workfare are forms of negative reinforcement. Workfare requires able-bodied adults to work or train in order to receive welfare. It’s like Mother Teresa or Gandhi with big sticks. And it works!
In 1996 the Republican’s welfare reform brought a workfare system resulting in soaring employment rates and earnings among single mothers. Child poverty rates declined significantly.
Removing rewards has positive results. For those collecting unemployment checks as soon as the benefits run out, one out of three find employment the following week, two of three within a month.
Unfortunately, Obama and Congressional Democrats have undone all the gain from workfare tough love. They have dismantled those successful GOP welfare reforms. Gone are the workfare requirements. Food stamps and disability claims have skyrocketed. EBT card fraud in Gallup is rampant.
Historically the party of slavery and segregation, (ironic isn’t it) the Democrats have found a new way to enslave minorities and gain their votes —the enabling of welfare slavery.
Here is a quote from a compassionate man: “Government created a poverty trap that wreaks havoc on the very support system the poor need most to lift themselves out of poverty, the family. Dependency has become the one enduring heirloom passed from one generation to the next, of too many fragmented families.” That was Ronald Reagan.
LBJ’s war on poverty led directly to the breakdown of the family unit, particularly in inner city black neighborhoods, Appalachia and Indian reservations. On the other hand, Asian-Americans didn’t buy into it and have thrived.
Nearly 50 years and 15 trillion dollars later there has been no decrease in national poverty — but the real damage of this liberal compassion has been the destruction of the American family. Children growing up without fathers is a traumatic and terrible thing. It has increased in direct proportion to redistribution of wealth, to the expansion of the welfare state. Redistribution of wealth has proven to be the distribution of mental illness. The income gap widens, the government elite are rewarded with more power and control and the citizens suffer. This is deemed compassionate by do-gooder liberals, however it is indeed cruel and immoral—more left-wing irony.
I’ve been primarily talking about the enabling of destructive behavior of individuals, however entire communities and even countries can suffer from welfare addiction; communities such as Gallup and the Navajo Nation. We are almost totally dependent on federal and state handouts. Billions of funding comes into our region yet the only results we see are the perpetuation of poverty and the continued breakdown of the nuclear biological family leading to the myriad of social problems. The money ends up funneled into the pockets of millionaires.
So, the government creates the societal breakdown and then intervenes with more destructive government programs which further enable the breakdown. The politically correct media and academia join in on the enabling as champions of the downtrodden and oppressed, pandering to the Navajo Nation, labor unions and political correctness while turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights violations. All well-meaning organizations are exempt from scrutiny. After all, to the religious left it is intentions that count, not results.
Even though most of our local assistance programs are merely attempting to clean up the mess created by federal programs, every charitable organization receiving public funding, such as NCI and Battered Families, should be required to justify their existence by providing proof of positive gain and prove that they are not a revolving door for those simply gaming the system for personal gain - prove that they are not enablers.
In our region we have followed the same socialist path as inner city welfare communities, resulting in an increase in societal breakdown—low self esteem, single mothers, poor education, health problems, crime and corruption. Indeed, McKinley County is proof that socialism doesn’t work. It’s difficult to see any gain and that alone meets the definition of enabling.
Good intentions don’t cut it anymore folks. We need positive results. The highway to hell is paved with good intentions—and that is a pretty good summation of the history of liberalism-progressivism-Marxism.
It’s a double whammy in McKinley County and the Navajo Nation. Not only do federal, tribal and state programs enable addictive and destructive behavior by our citizens, they also enable our own community addiction for more and more government funding, more programs, more handouts. A few years ago Sheriff Paul Babeu in Arizona proclaimed “Our own government has become our enemy.” When it comes to redistribution of wealth via the welfare state the data certainly backs up that conclusion.
And this was all put into motion by the political party which is the engine that propels the progressive/Marxist train of enabling—the Democrat machine. They own this region. This is their creation. They are the enablers of destruction. They must be held accountable.
We are addicted to the handouts and are still in the denial stage. The first step to recovery is internal acceptance…. My name is Gallup and I am an addict.
Sincerely,
Joe Schaller
Gallup citizen
