From helping hand to five-finger discount



America’s debate over poverty has undergone a remarkable and troubling transformation. Two centuries ago, the central challenge was persuading needy people to accept public assistance. Today, the challenge is preventing people from fraudulently claiming benefits to which they were never entitled.

That trajectory tells us something profound about the nation’s changing moral culture.

What had once been viewed as a last resort gradually came to be seen as an entitlement detached from personal responsibility.

Alexis de Tocqueville noticed something remarkable when he traveled through America in the early 1830s. Unlike Europe, where poverty often produced permanent dependence upon the state or aristocratic patrons, Americans possessed an almost universal determination to remain independent. They formed voluntary associations to care for neighbors in distress, but they regarded prolonged dependence as inconsistent with the character of a free citizen.

That observation reflected a broader understanding shared by the American founders and the generation that followed them.

Every state maintained some provision for public relief, but it was deliberately limited and administered locally. It existed for those genuinely incapable of caring for themselves — the disabled, widows, orphans, and others facing extraordinary hardship. Families, churches, fraternal organizations, and private charities bore the primary responsibility for helping the poor.

Public charity carried a social stigma — not because Americans lacked compassion, but because they believed that independence was itself a form of human dignity.

Justice Joseph Story explained that republican government depended upon a virtuous and independent citizenry. The ideal citizen governed himself before participating in governing others. Economic independence fostered political independence; citizens who could support themselves were less susceptible to manipulation by those dispensing favors or public largesse.

One of the striking features of early America is not that assistance was unavailable, but that many people who qualified for relief were reluctant to seek it.

Contemporary accounts from several states — including New Jersey — describe respectable men and women enduring extraordinary hardship before accepting public charity. To modern ears, such reluctance may seem irrational. To them, it was a matter of preserving self-respect.

That moral instinct — that accepting public assistance should be exceptional rather than ordinary — formed an essential part of the American understanding of citizenship until the 20th century.

The first cracks in that understanding appeared during the Progressive Era and deepened during the New Deal. Faced with industrialization, urban poverty, and the Great Depression, Americans increasingly looked to government to perform functions that earlier generations had entrusted to institutions outside the government.

Much of that expansion responded to genuine crises, and programs such as Social Security reflected the extraordinary circumstances of their time.

Even so, the nation’s underlying philosophy was beginning to change. Government was no longer viewed simply as a safety net for those unable to care for themselves; it increasingly became expected to solve all social and economic problems.

The shift was gradual and often justified by necessity. But it subtly weakened the older assumption that public assistance should remain exceptional, temporary, and closely tied to preserving personal independence.

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Then came the Great Society, which transformed that gradual evolution into a new governing philosophy.

It was no longer enough for government to provide a backstop against destitution. Washington now assumed responsibility for eliminating poverty itself, dramatically expanding both the scope of public assistance and the expectation that government would provide it.

Lyndon Johnson’s anti-poverty initiatives promised not merely to relieve poverty, but to eradicate it. The federal government assumed responsibilities that had traditionally rested with families, churches, private charities, and local communities. Welfare increasingly became not an emergency measure but a permanent feature of American life.

Though the Great Society’s architects believed they were expanding compassion, they failed to appreciate that they were also reshaping character. As benefits expanded and eligibility became more complex, government increasingly rewarded dependency rather than independence. Bureaucracies grew. Incentives shifted. Entire industries arose to help people maximize government benefits rather than minimize their reliance upon them.

Most importantly, the moral understanding surrounding public assistance changed.

What had once been viewed as a last resort gradually came to be seen as an entitlement detached from personal responsibility. The question shifted from “Do I truly need help?” to “What benefits can I qualify for?”

Today, we appear to have entered yet another stage.

The headlines are filled not merely with dependency, but with outright theft. Fraudulent unemployment claims. Identity theft used to obtain government benefits. Organized criminal enterprises exploiting Medicare and Medicaid. Billions of dollars in pandemic relief stolen through fake applications and fictitious businesses. International criminal organizations siphoning taxpayer dollars from programs intended to help struggling Americans.

In state after state, investigators have uncovered elaborate schemes involving food assistance, housing subsidies, disability payments, and health care reimbursements.

That is not to say that every welfare recipient is dishonest or even dependent. The overwhelming majority of Americans who receive public assistance are law-abiding citizens, many facing genuine hardship. But a system that steadily weakens the connection between work and reward inevitably creates opportunities — and temptations — for abuse.

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Once government benefits come to be viewed less as charity for the truly needy than as a pot of money available for the taking, the moral barrier separating dependence from outright fraud begins to erode.

No society can long endure when the distinction between earning and taking begins to disappear. The welfare state ultimately depends upon trust: trust that recipients are honest, that taxpayers will continue to support programs for those in genuine need, and that government will faithfully safeguard the public treasury. Rampant fraud destroys each of those assumptions.

The greatest victims are often the truly needy. Every dollar stolen by fraudsters is a dollar unavailable to a disabled veteran, a struggling single mother, or an elderly widow living on a fixed income. Every scandal further erodes public confidence in programs that exist for legitimate purposes.

Reforming welfare therefore requires more than better auditing, modernized computer systems, or tougher prosecutors, although all of those are necessary. It requires recovering an older understanding of citizenship.

The founders recognized something that modern policymakers have too often forgotten: Independence is a political virtue. Citizens capable of supporting themselves are more capable of governing themselves. A republic cannot flourish if large portions of the population come to regard government not as the protector of liberty, but as the primary provider of livelihood.

America’s success has historically rested primarily on the character of its people, not on government programs.

Our national journey — from dignity to welfare dependence to thievery — was not inevitable, and it is not irreversible. The same nation that once prized independence above comfort can recover that ethic.

But doing so will require us to remember what earlier generations instinctively understood: There is a profound difference between helping a neighbor in genuine need and constructing a system that slowly erodes the very virtues upon which a free people depend.

Compassion remains indispensable. But so do dignity, self-reliance, and personal responsibility. Lose those, and we will discover that the greatest poverty afflicting America is no longer material. It is moral.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally at the American Mind.

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We thought the Supreme Court had finally purged anti-religious discrimination from Establishment Clause jurisprudence. After years of confusion — conflating the ban on state-sponsored religion with an invented mandate to scrub faith from public life — the Court, through a series of rulings on religious schools and public funding, had restored sanity. It returned the law to its pre-Warren era understanding: Equal treatment of religion does not violate the Constitution.

Yet, here we are again.

Those who claim that equal treatment of religion violates the Establishment Clause are the ones betraying its meaning.

In a move that stunned observers, Oklahoma’s own Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond and the state supreme court now argue that states cannot recognize religious charter schools.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond. The case centers on St. Isidore, a Catholic online school seeking to join Oklahoma’s charter school system. Drummond contends the school’s religious affiliation disqualifies it. He sued the state charter board — a move usually made by the ACLU or militant secularist groups.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court sided with him. The court claimed that granting charter status to a Catholic school would violate the First Amendment by effectively establishing Catholicism as a state religion. Justices labeled charter schools “state actors” and argued that any religious affiliation disqualifies a school from public recognition.

This logic turns the First Amendment on its head. The Constitution does not require hostility toward religion. It requires neutrality. Denying a religious school access to a public benefit — simply because it is religious — violates precedent.

Oklahoma’s Charter Schools Act permits any “private college or university, private person, or private organization” to apply for state funding to open a charter school. Excluding religious applicants contradicts not one but three major Supreme Court rulings.

In Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia Inc v. Comer (2017), the court ruled that excluding a religious school from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified “solely because it is a church” is “odious to our Constitution.” That case involved a grant for playground resurfacing. If states can’t deny rubber mulch, they can’t deny full charter status.

In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), a 5-4 majority held that state constitutions barring aid to religious institutions over secular ones violates the Free Exercise Clause. Public benefits, the Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized, cannot be denied “solely because of the religious character of the schools.”

Then came Carson v. Makin (2022), where Maine tried to distinguish between religious status and religious use, barring religious schools from voucher funds. The court rejected the distinction. Roberts, writing again for the majority, ruled that the program “operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.” He warned that attempts to judge how a religious school carries out its mission invite unconstitutional state entanglement.

So how, after such ironclad precedent, do we find a Republican state attorney general and a court in a state Trump carried in every county ruling that religious schools can’t even apply for public funding?

The answer lies in years of lukewarm Republican control. These are Republicans in name only, who blocked judicial reform and refused to challenge activist courts. Now, Drummond wants a promotion. He’s announced his run for governor after already overruling the state education superintendent’s decision to ban pornography in public libraries.

This case reveals a larger pattern. Courts act as a one-way ratchet. Even after strong Supreme Court rulings, liberal lower courts defy precedent. They delay, split hairs, and distinguish without merit. The high court may reverse Oklahoma, but its rulings rarely secure lasting victories.

And the irony? Those who claim that equal treatment of religion violates the Establishment Clause are the ones betraying its meaning.

During the House debate on the First Amendment in 1789, James Madison explained: “Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience.”

That principle — freedom of conscience without coercion — shaped the American experiment. Far from excluding religion, the founders assumed its influence. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.” He added that politics and religion formed an “alliance which has never been dissolved.”

It’s time for the Supreme Court to reaffirm that alliance — clearly, decisively, and without leaving room for lower courts to ignore. And in Oklahoma, it’s time to elect Republicans who still believe the Bible belongs in the Bible Belt.

Faith and family are keys to resisting tyranny’s grip



The evil doctrines of Marxism have infiltrated many institutions in the United States, leading conservatives to frame cultural and political battles as a contest between individualism and collectivism. On the surface, this makes sense. Marxism, as the ideology of communism, promotes state-enforced equality where individual agency is subordinated to a top-down notion of the collective good.

Many past conservative thinkers recognized this as a false binary, however. They understood that individualism, if left unchecked, can foster conditions that pave the way for tyranny. Lower-order organic identities — such as family, faith, and community — have repeatedly proven to be the only effective forces against the imposition of top-down despotism. The true battle is not between individualism and collectivism but between ordered liberty and disordered tyranny.

Framing our current opposition to Marxist dogma as a conflict between individualism and collectivism is a mistake.

In his classic work “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville explored the rise of individualism during the democratic age following the American and French revolutions. De Tocqueville believed a democratic trajectory was inevitable for France and sought to understand how Americans had managed to curb its worst impulses.

He observed that individualism often led people to focus solely on their own lives and interests, leaving them indifferent to the well-being of their neighbors and their communities. This lack of civic engagement, he argued, made it easier for despots to establish tyrannical rule. A despot thrives on individual apathy and the absence of civic virtue. He wrote:

Despotism, suspicious by its very nature, views the separation of men as the best guarantee of its own permanent rule and usually does all it can to keep them in isolation. No defect of the human heart suits it better than egoism; a tyranny is relaxed enough to forgive his subjects for failing to love him, provided that they do not love one another. He does not ask them to help him to govern the state; it is enough that they have no intention of managing it themselves.

How did Americans preserve a spirit of individualism while avoiding its corrosive effects on civic life? For de Tocqueville, the answer lay in their impulse to build free institutions and engage in voluntary associations. He observed that Americans had an instinct to form committees, community organizations, and charities to address almost every problem.

In the United States, individuals did not need to be ruled by a powerful despot because citizens were expected to actively contribute to the collective well-being of their communities through voluntary efforts. This approach was individualistic in that it arose organically and was not compelled by the state. But it was also collectivist in that individuals felt a profound duty to their families, churches, and communities.

Even when problems required government intervention, governance in America was primarily local. The national government remained small, and local matters were handled by elected officials who were familiar with the specific character and needs of their communities. According to de Tocqueville:

American legislators did not believe that a general representation of the whole nation would be enough to cure a disease so natural to the frame of democratic society and so fatal. They also thought it appropriate to give each area of the territory its own political life so as to multiply without limit the opportunities for citizens to act in concert and to let them realize every day their mutual dependence. This was a wise plan.

Despite their individualistic tendencies, the American system encouraged citizens to recognize their interdependence and address issues affecting their communities at the local level. The collective identity of the polis enabled them to resolve problems more effectively without formal government involvement.

Even when government action was necessary, it was limited in scope, shaped by the community’s identity and political structure. The state did not need to enforce collectivity because communities formed naturally, allowing individualism to thrive without descending into tyranny.

The greatest evidence of this principle can be found in the tactics used by communist regimes to centralize power. Marxists routinely advocate the destruction of the family, church, and even ethnic identity because these lower-order bonds obstruct the centralization of authority. As de Tocqueville observed, the isolated individual is most vulnerable to despotism.

Totalitarian regimes seek to ensure that all relationships are mediated between the individual and the state, leaving each person dependent on the central authority for assistance and conflict resolution. By contrast, people bound by organic ties of faith, family, and community are far more likely to resist the arbitrary dictates of a despot.

When Western governments attempted to create biomedical security states in the wake of COVID-19, it was almost exclusively communities of faith that had the courage to resist. Religious groups possessed an identity and allegiance that extended beyond individual material benefit. This collective identity gave them both the courage and community support needed to stand firm against the dictates of the regime. These communities were able to defend their liberty because they exercised it collectively, united in purpose.

The American tradition embodies individual liberty practiced in service to the collective good. It is a liberty ordered toward a higher purpose, pursued through the establishment of free institutions and voluntary associations. Framing our current opposition to Marxist dogma as a conflict between individualism and collectivism is a mistake.

Instead, we should understand that by practicing individual virtue in service to our organic communities, we can avoid the tyrannical state that Marxism prescribes. This ensures that liberty is not just a personal right but a shared responsibility to uphold the well-being of our families, faith, and communities.

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