The Cloward/Piven Strategy: The Perfect Storm

The Cloward/Priven Strategy was developed by Richard A. Cloward and Francis Fox Piven in the mod 60's as a way to affect social change by causing the collapse of the existing Welfare System by overwhelming it with new applicants. In Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare they lay out the plan, and give historical perspective for the strategy's implementation and success, to force government to expand social welfare programs. The ultimate goal in this plan, as explained in their 1966 article published in The Nation magazine, is to force the government to provide a guaranteed yearly income to the poor by the redistribution of wealth to the poor. The fundamental theory of this plan is found in historical revolts throughout history including the Great Depression that resulted in the New Deal plan of social reform.

The strategy was implemented in the 1960's successfully by enlisting militant civil rights activists to help mobilize the poor and overwhelm the welfare system with applicants who previously resisted entering into welfare due to the social stigma associated with it. The result of the ensuing protests and riots has been the continued expansion of the welfare system, the erosion of the negative social stigma associated with receiving welfare, and the expansion of a pseudo-socialist political agenda embraced by the Left. Prior to this many people (50% of those eligible) refused to apply for welfare because the community looked down on people who didn't take care of themselves and many who were on welfare received well below the level of assistance the program allowed for. Since the introduction of this theory the social stigma associated with welfare has been all but eliminated.

40 years later we have a society that has forgotten the principles of personal responsibility and and self reliance that drove our country to a level of innovation, ingenuity, and success that gave us an advantage over every other nation in the world. This trend can be reversed by returning to our roots and holding those who choose to be on welfare programs accountable to the country. A very wise man once said, "If a man will not work, then let him not eat as well." It may sound cruel to say, but if a person gets hungry enough they will either work, or starve to death...either way the problem is solved. This is not to say that we all don't need help from time to time. But isn't it the responsibility of the family or the religious organization to provide that help. Forcing the nation to provide for those who will not provide for themselves damages everyone's ability to participate in the American Dream. The American Dream is the opportunity  to improve their quality of life and to accumulate personal wealth through hard work and personal responsibility. Welfare is not the American Dream.

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.