An Observation on Post-Electoral Republican Soul Searching

Following the election, we’ve been hearing for nearly a month now about the woes of the Republican party and the need for it to re-invent itself; that it’s “losing touch”. One primary reason “they” cite is the consistency gap between economic and personal liberty in Republican ideology. For instance, the state shouldn’t regulate the market, but it can and should regulate what you do with your body and who you do it with. Pundits and critics have been pointing to this inconsistency as a primary cause of electoral disenfranchisement for years.

What is rarely, if ever, discussed is the consistency gap between the Republican values of promoting self-reliance and achieving sustained economic growth. In other words, when Republicans (or either party, really, but Republicans in particular) extoll the virtues of self-reliance the words ring very hollow, and I suspect more and more people are waking up to that, calling it out for the BS it is. Here’s what got me thinking…

I was in line at the supermarket this morning and the woman ahead of me used her EBT card (food stamps, although they avoid calling it that anymore—they change the language every time negative connotations become associated with a term) as payment. She had just purchased a case of Pepsi, two boxes of Hamburger Helper, one… tube of ground “beef” (or whatever that stuff is), a gallon of milk, a bag of fun-sized Oh! Henrys and, of course, some “organic” yellow onions.

As her 300-lb. frame and proportional fingers struggled to input her PIN while managing her cell phone and leashed 4-year-old child, a thought occurred to me that might be helpful to a Republican party struggling with the balance between continuing relevancy and adherence to core principles. As a disclaimer, I really don’t care (and would probably delight in the occurrence) if the Republican party—and political systems in general, for that matter—goes the way of the dodo or not. When that happens, not if, is the question anyway. I’m just trying to be helpful, for what it’s worth…

Instead of food stamps—that is, giving people other people’s money to buy “food”—I thought it might be a good idea to send those who are dependent on government assistance a big box of MREs (rations), a big box of seeds, and a bag of dirt. The rations will get them through a season until what they’ve grown can begin to bear fruit. They would be taught self-reliance (a Republican value) while promoting community-based ecologic sustainability (a Democrat value) and healthier lifestyles (hopefully a value present in both parties, although I’m not sure). A forward-thinking, bipartisan solution with minimal ideological compromise, right?

But it would never happen.

Let’s set aside for a moment how this illustrates the absurdity of dependence on anything outside yourself to procure the needs for your own survival. After all, seeds are free anyway if you know where to look and have a little patience. There isn’t really any need for a state program. Mother Nature does all the real work. Plants basically grow themselves for free, and all they ask in return is that you take care of the soil—which is ridiculously easy even in urban environments, if only we would realize that which we had once known and lost.

Returning to a political context, welfare reform such as this would never happen because people becoming self-reliant en masse poses a systemic threat to the robbery of human dignity we call an “economy”, so there’s no way Republicans (or Democrats) would ever go for something like this. The more self-reliant we are as individuals, the less dependent we are on the goods and services offered by others, be it in the market or from the state. Sustained self-sufficiency and perpetual economic growth are not compatible, yet Republicans claim them as two core principles of their philosophy. They don’t want you dependent on the government; they want you dependent on the corporations. It is still dependency, the anathema of true human liberty, therefore there is little difference between the two (as if there is any substantive division between the state and the corporations in the first place).

Perhaps Republicans would be better-served by an honest critical analysis of the contradictions within their own philosophy than they would through minor positional reforms, as such inconsistencies seem to be many. Food stamps are, realistically, nothing more than state subsidies to corporations who make processed chemical garbage, call it food, and sell it as such. If we eliminated such subsidies by making the sustenance aspect of welfare self-sustaining (i.e., if people didn’t have to use the stolen money they get from the government to purchase the corporation’s products), corporations such as these would go bankrupt and the economy would likely collapse.

They say they value self-reliance, yet are beholden to a system that makes such a lifestyle largely impossible. I think many people are finally starting to see this hypocrisy. Your thoughts?

IMO Welfare is a system of family destruction.

We need to abolish it completely and work on a system of adult education that will get people out of the muck they are in.

And fix it so that when you really need it you can get it.
Right now my mother inlaw is sick and can't work.
But she's denied everything.
She's paid into the system her taxes over the many years she's worked here in this country.
But she gets 0 from the government.

However if you're a recent immigrant you get everything the government can offer.
There's a problem there.

reply to post by NthOther


Interesting point.

We were self sufficient once, when we were all 'Hunter Gatherers' but then some bright spark invented the Plough which led to civilization. It's all been down hill from there really.

In a perfect world there would be no need for Food Stamps. But it isn't, so there is.

What I do have a problem with, is what they can't be used for i.e Soap, Bathroom Tissue etc.

A family member of mine owns an Event Services Company. She organizes and staffs parties for people, She is also a big Ron Paul supporter.

A couple of years ago she managed to get Food Stamps for a few months. $300 a month.

This big Ron Paul supporter spent the entire $300 of the first month on Chocolate for a Chocolate Fountain, Salmon, and a whole Tender Loin amongst other things for one of her parties.

When I pointed out the hypocrisy, she informed me that as she was a business owner she could do as she liked.

Do not use electronic voting machines and do require photo I.D. is what i took from it. The most rigged election in American history .

Originally posted by BritofTexas

We were self sufficient once, when we were all 'Hunter Gatherers' but then some bright spark invented the Plough which led to civilization. It's all been down hill from there really.

Pretty much. People living in groups large enough to require the importation of resources for their survival are not living in a naturally harmonious manner. Land disputes arise out of the necessity for mass agriculture, which leads to war, etc. Civilization is really a nasty thing when you think about it.

In a perfect world there would be no need for Food Stamps. But it isn't, so there is.

There isn’t really a need for food stamps now. Food is free. You just have to grow it (and/or hunt it) responsibly. It would be really easy for small communities to organize and manage their own co-ops. They just have to do it, which I believe will be an inevitability as the economy continues to swirl around the drain. Good riddance, in my humble opinion.

A family member of mine owns an Event Services Company. She organizes and staffs parties for people, She is also a big Ron Paul supporter.

A couple of years ago she managed to get Food Stamps for a few months. $300 a month.

This big Ron Paul supporter spent the entire $300 of the first month on Chocolate for a Chocolate Fountain, Salmon, and a whole Tender Loin amongst other things for one of her parties.

This is why we should just give out seeds. But again, that isn’t possible because once people start providing for themselves, the money they would’ve spent on the goods and services offered at a price by someone else begins to disappear from a large sector of the economy.

When politicians in general, and Republicans in particular, talk about self-sufficiency, they don’t really mean it because, A) the object of dependency merely shifts from state to corporation; and, B) state and corporation are so intertwined that to eliminate dependence on either is to destroy the legitimacy of both.

IMO; The current Republican politician doesn't reflect with genuine hopes
of connecting with new voters. They scheme and devise a new sets of
doctrines to get the votes that have been lost because white men
do not have the voting numbers they used to.

I know its what you witnessed but your grocery store story is the typical one.
It's what everyone who thinks welfare is like winning the lottery imagines.
The only thing missing was this overweight woman being a minority
having 20 kids, but driving a Cadillac .
For many working families, not taking advantage, having a food card
is what stands between them and becoming homeless.

Corporate Welfare is 92 billion dollars.
Welfare for people is 49 billion. And you made a great connection
with the fact that the food companies get all that "welfare" money as well.

So..

Until BIG OIL and companies like GE and Boeing stop raking us over the coals
and finally pay their fair share of taxes, civil welfare reform is small fries.
Republicans will still be constitutional hypocrites but throw a minority like Rubio
in and say ,"See we're not predudice" . However, continue to govern for big business and against people.