While catching up on my OpEd reading, I ran across a piece from Bob Herbert of the New York Times, which ran in my Kansas City Star on December 20.  Mr. Herbert's subject was the displaced persons from Hurricane Katrina, some of whom still live in FEMA trailers around Baker, Louisiana (where the article was datelined).  The thrust of Mr. Herbert's piece was that "the government" failed these citizens by not giving them a decent place to live and a job so that they could earn their way back into the lifestyle enjoyed before Katrina hit New Orleans.

Since when, Mr. Herbert, does "the government" owe an American ANYTHING?

One of the precepts of which our nation was founded is that a person can become anything that he or she wants to be, if they're willing to work hard enough to achieve that goal.  When a person becomes dependent on "the government" to the point that they are willing to live in a FEMA trailer "with three or four children, cooped up in there seven days a week, 24 hours a day, with no privacy, no babysitter, no job, no money" (a quote from a caseworker that was given in the article), then it must be concluded that they EXPECT "the government" to hand-feed them everything, and they have given up on the American Dream.

This is the core of the "welfare mentality".

President Franklin Roosevelt saw a need when he took office in 1933.  The Great Depression was in full swing in the United States, and in fact around the world as a delayed result of World War One.  FDR began his government-sponsored work programs to give people a sense of fulfillment, as well as a means to support themselves and their families.  This was the correct decision at the time.

The welfare program was also begun at this time.  By 1935 a national welfare system had been put in place to ensure that all Americans could be supplied with the daily essentials of life.  Again, a worthy aim, and perhaps the correct decision at the time.  HOWEVER, it is not such today.

This is January 4, 2007.  People have been able to depend on the Federal government to supply their needs now for over seventy years, or almost three full generations.  There are those that would decry the concept of multi-generational welfare families, but the fact is that such does indeed occur, and today you could very likely point to a family that has been on welfare not only their entire lives, but the lives of their parents AND grandparents as well.  This is an absolutely insupportable situation, and should not be allowed to continue further.

The welfare mentality takes hold when a person discovers that it is much easier to jump through the hoops of the government than to actually go out, find a job, and pay your own bills.  Once that mentality takes hold, a person has no incentive to improve their lot in life, because that would mean the loss of those "benefits" for which they qualify.  The loss of personal incentive means the loss of the American Dream to be anything you want to be.  Instead, you have become a slave to the system, and a dependent on socialistic re-distribution of wealth to which you have demonstrated NO claim, except for the fact that you exist.

The people displaced by Katrina (NOT "Katrina victims"; that phrase should be reserved to those who died as a result of the hurricane) have suffered a great blow to their lives.  Still, continuing to live in a FEMA trailer some sixteen months AFTER the event indicates to me an incapability to fend for themselves.  Those who truly dislike their situation find a way out of it.  Those who are willing to give control over to an outside agency take what they are given.  Such is the case with those families; had they found the situation intolerable, they would have packed up and left those trailers long ago, found another place to live, found work, and be on their way today to regaining all that they have lost since the summer of 2005.

I am sure that there are many stories of people who have done exactly that, and I salute those people as the latest demonstration that the American Dream still does exist and can be attained, and that this is indeed the land of opportunity.  That, in a nutshell, is the Cold Hard Fact:  The ONLY thing the American government owes its' citizens is the chance to succeed.  What a person does with that chance is up to them.