Welfare Is Not the American Dream.

One simple statistic, 1 in 6 Americans receive some form of government assistance to survive, should scare the absolute hell out of all Americans. And it is only getting worse. As unemployment and under-employment (9.6% and 16% respectively) continues to skyrocket, and wages continue to fall, we are quickly becoming the Welfare State that our Government Dreams of. It seems that the American mentality has shifted from the founding notions of "American Self Reliance: and "Personal Responsibility" to the notion that the government must tell us how to think and live as well as provide our basic necessities of life. The virtues of hard work and innovation our country is founded on, and the liberties we enjoy because of them, are quickly being eroded by this New American Attitude that Everyone has a Right to Everything.

Many charitable organizations, that traditionally provided for people when they fell on hard times no longer support the people in the community. Today the charitable organizations have been replace by government programs that fund people who sometimes gain levels of comfort and quality of life most of us can only dream of. Private charitable organizations now support the people of foreign countries instead of our communities.

The evil sinister side to the welfare state, that most people do not understand, is the fact that there are strings attached. By allowing our government to fund social programs through the State government we enter into an agreement to allow them to control those aspects of life or risk losing the financial support of our government. We can have the money, but at the expense of our freedom to live how we want to.

We can seize control of our lives from the government if we want to. We simply have to choose to not listen to those who promote the welfare state and the idea that everyone is entitled to what We The People work our asses off for. We simply have to refuse to take a Federal Government Handout at the Personal, the Local, and the State level. We simply have to reaffirm that The American Dream is about the opportunity, through hard work and personal responsibility, for a better life. We have to send a message to Washington that says The American Dream is not an entitlement program.