NUGENT: Do nothing, get nothing

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jan/28/do-nothing-get-nothing/

All good things come from effort. This is why any able-bodied person receiving welfare, unemployment or other financial assistance from Fedzilla, a state or county should do something to earn it.

Just as no responsible parent gives his child an allowance without expecting a certain number of chores to be completed in return, this same common-sense approach on a national scale would do wonders to bring America out of her malaise. There are millions of able-bodied Americans receiving financial assistance who can do something in return for the assistance being provided them by their fellow Americans.

One of life’s immutable and irrefutable truths is that giving people financial assistance without demanding something in return strips them of their pride, work ethic and soul. It’s a form of slavery, if you will. This poisonous policy ultimately destroys families, entire communities and, historically, entire societies. Giving someone something for nothing is analogous to rewarding bad behavior. Only idiots do that. And the French.

Over the past 50 years, we’ve created an entire subclass of Americans who literally know nothing other than receiving various forms of government financial assistance without having to do anything to earn it. It’s a big-time wrong approach unless the goal is to destroy these people and their communities. President Johnson’s Great Society didn’t turn out to be so great, after all.

Everywhere I go in America, I see things that could be fixed, spruced up, cleaned up or replaced. You would have to be blind not to see the same things in every community in America.

There is trash that needs to be picked up in city parks and all along highways nationwide, buildings that need to be painted, weeds that need to be pulled, snow that needs to be shoveled, lawns that need to be mowed, schools that need to be painted, fences that need to be fixed, sidewalks that need to be repaired, good charities that need basic labor, kids that need tutoring, etc. Maybe Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity will teach them how to build a house. The work list is only limited by your imagination.

Under my brilliant, common-sense plan, if a person doesn’t put in a certain number of hours of work each week, he loses financial assistance for a month. When a person gets hungry enough, he will work. Being hungry and working for basic subsistence is the first step on the journey of rehabilitating pride and a work ethic. A dose of tough love is a highly effective motivator.

Being busy with a sense of purpose is the goal of those of us who understand what a real great society should be. Great societies are not created or sustained by having able-bodied people sitting at home, collecting a check for nothing while watching their giant-screen televisions, surfing the Internet or playing video games.

Helping people is not sending them a check without any expectation of effort. That’s how to destroy people. If you truly want to help people, incentivize them to earn their own way. That liberates them and turns them into producers instead of parasites. It’s a simple upgrade begging to be had.

I absolutely want to help people down on their luck, but I know that true help is giving people a hand up, not a handout. The ultimate goal is to create tough, smart people with that wonderful all-American, kick-ass attitude and work ethic. That’s what China fears the most.

Only squawkers, socialist punks and various bloodsuckers will find fault with the abundantly clear common-sense truism that all good things come from heart-and-soul effort. They should always be ignored. They are always the problem, never the solution.

At the end of the day, all red-blooded Americans must ask themselves if they have chosen to be in the asset column or the liability column. Our enemies are paying attention. I pray to God we are.