The enduring tension between social welfare and the ethic of self-reliance

“ Egoistic impulses are recognized, in that reward and punishment are allotted, but the end urged upon the attention of the individual is the common good, not his own particular good.
The social conscience has always demanded of the individual self- sacrifice, even to the extent of laying down his life, on occasion, for the public weal. And the enlightened social conscience does not regard a man as truly moral whose outward conformity to moral laws rests solely upon a basis of egoistic calculation. The very existence of the family, the tribe, the state, is a protest against pure egoism. ”

“ It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association ”

“ The individual is part of the family, and the family is part of a higher community. It is only when we are come to some community which is not part of any higher, that we have found the being, the good of which is primary good, the aim of law. Such a community, not being part of any higher community in the same order, is in its own order a perfect community. Thus, in the temporal order, the individual is part of the State. The State is a perfect community; and the good of the State is of more consequence than the temporal well-being of any individual citizen. ”

“ Is the state a permanently necessary institution? The principle of integration embodied in the state is a fundamental one. It is the principle of coöperation for coöperation. The good of any institution is that of coöperation for some end. The primary end of the state is that of coöperation itself. Its purpose is that of enabling men to live and work together in peace. Loyalty to the national group is loyalty to the principle of human coöperation. The most valuable thing about the state is not that it does this or that, but that it gets men working together. ”

“ The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class's selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests by working for our common country.
We can keep our government on a sane and healthy basis, we can make and keep our social system what it should be, only on condition of judging each man, not as a member of a class, but on his worth as a man. ”

“ Indeed, this is one of the great evils of Welfarism—that it transforms the individual from a dignified, industrious, self-reliant spiritual being into a dependent animal creature without his knowing it. There is no avoiding this damage to character under the Welfare State. Welfare programs cannot help but promote the idea that the government owes the benefits it confers on the individual, and that the individual is entitled, by right, to receive them. Such programs are sold to the country precisely on the argument that government has an obligation to care for the needs of its citizens. ”

“ We have social welfare as the result of wealth consumed, or used up. Society is interested in all the wealth accumulated, and the methods of its accumulation and its fair distribution are a part of social machinery; yet these have their chief significance in the final consumption. It is not what we have, but what we do with it, that makes society interested in our possessions. It is not what society has, but how it uses it, that settles the chief questions of welfare or illfare. ”

“ The purpose of our labor determines its qualities of truth and healthfulness. Satisfaction must be sought by employing our faculties in the useful arts and in the search for truth. Perfection of self is the ultimate good for each individual, but this is attained, not in isolation, but in social life with its mutual obligations. The lesson of civil and religious liberty, taught by the great reformers, has been only partly learned. Individualism, rightly understood, is the true political doctrine, but the selfishness of individual freedom is the first quality to develop. ”

“ The common good includes the good of every member of the community, and the injury which a man inflicts upon himself is matter of common concern, even apart from any [Pg 143] ulterior effect upon others. If we refrain from coercing a man for his own good, it is not because his good is indifferent to us, but because it cannot be furthered by coercion. The difficulty is founded on the nature of the good itself, which on its personal side depends on the spontaneous flow of feeling checked and guided not by external restraint but by rational self-control. ”

“ The welfare of our Country is the great object to which our cares and efforts ought to be directed. And I shall derive great satisfaction from a co-operation with you, in the pleasing tho arduous task of ensuring to our fellow-citizens the blessings which they have a right to expect from a free, efficient and equal Government.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105) . ”

“ Commonwealth - a nation, state, or other political entity founded on law and united by a compact of the people for the common good. Communism - a system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single - often authoritarian - party holds power; state controls are imposed with the elimination of private ownership of property or capital while claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people (i.e., a classless society) . ”

“ In the last analysis the welfare of the state depends absolutely upon whether or not the average family, the average man and woman and their children, represent the kind of citizenship fit for the foundation of a great nation; and if we fail to appreciate this we fail to appreciate the root morality upon which all healthy civilization is based. ”

“ I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action. ”

“ By language, by training, by simply living with others, each of us absorbs into his system the social atmosphere that surrounds us. In particular, in the matter of rights and duties which is cardinal for Liberal theory, the relation of the individual to the community is everything. His rights and his duties are alike defined by the common good. What, for example, is my right? ”

“ Of the Ten Commandments, four pertain to Religious Worship; six are Utilitarian, that is, have no end except to ward off evils, and to further the good of mankind.
(2) The general welfare is at all times considered a strong and adequate justification of moral rules, and is constantly adduced as a motive for obedience. The commonplaces in support of law and morality represent, that if murder and theft were to go unpunished, neither life nor property would be safe; men would be in eternal warfare; industry would perish; society must soon come to an end. ”

“ First, There is a natural principle of benevolence [1] in man which is in some degree to society, what self-love is to the individual. And if there be in mankind any disposition to friendship; if there be any such thing as compassion, for compassion is momentary love; if there be any such thing as the paternal or filial affections; if there be any affection in human nature, the object and end of which is the good of another ”

“ We need to remember that the fact of development implies degrees, and that neither egoism nor altruism is an absolute term. A certain care of self, physically and mentally, is necessary to cheerfulness, health, sympathy, and the due performance of labor and kindnesses; just as, conversely, in society, the health and happiness of the individual are dependent upon the aid of others. The antagonistic character of the two principles is gradually modified in evolution and disappears altogether in some cases of action; in the contemplation of the ideal, it vanishes completely. ”

“ But more than all else we need that the average man shall have in him the root of righteous living; that the average man shall have in him the feeling that will make him ashamed to do wrong or to submit to wrong, and that will make him feel his bounden duty to help those that are weaker, to help those especially that are in any way dependent upon him, and while not in any way losing his power of individual initiative, to cultivate the further power of acting in combination with his fellows for the [239] common end of social uplifting and good government. ”

“ For the first time in our nation's history, millions of Americans became virtual wards of the State, trapped in a cycle of welfare dependency that robs them of dignity and opportunity. With our economic success of the 1980's, the poverty rate has begun to shrink, but the problem of welfare dependency remains. No one doubts that welfare programs were designed with the best of intentions, but neither can anyone doubt that they've failed-failed to boost people out of dependency. ”

“ My friends, some years ago, the Federal Government declared war on poverty, and poverty won. Today the Federal Government has 59 major welfare programs and spends more than $100 billion a year on them. What has all this money done? Well, too often it has only made poverty harder to escape. Federal welfare programs have created a massive social problem. With the best of intentions, government created a poverty trap that wreaks havoc on the very support system the poor need most to lift themselves out of poverty: the family. ”

“ More must be done to reduce poverty and dependency and, believe me, nothing is more important than welfare reform. It's now common knowledge that our welfare system has itself become a poverty trap-a creator and reinforcer of dependency-and that's why last year, in my State of the Union Message, I called for an overhaul of our welfare system. ”

“ As we work to make the American Dream real for all, we must also look to the condition of America's families. Struggling parents today worry how they will provide their children the advantages that their parents gave them. In the welfare culture, the breakdown of the family, the most basic support system, has reached crisis proportions — in female and child poverty, child abandonment, horrible crimes and deteriorating schools. After hundreds of billions of dollars in poverty programs, the plight of the poor grows more painful. ”

“ Our citizens feel they've lost control of even the most basic decisions made about the essential services of government, such as schools, welfare, roads, and even garbage collection. And they're right. A maze of interlocking jurisdictions and levels of government confronts average citizens in trying to solve even the simplest of problems. They don't know where to turn for answers, who to hold accountable, who to praise, who to blame, who to vote for or against. The main reason for this is the overpowering growth of Federal grants-in-aid programs during the past few decades. ”

“ As for those suggestions that the answer is higher taxes, the American people have repeatedly rejected that shop-worn advice. They know that we don't have deficits because people are taxed too little. We have deficits because big government spends too much.
Now, next month I'll place two additional reforms before the Congress. We've created a welfare monster that is a shocking indictment of our sense of priorities. Our national welfare system consists of some 59 major programs and over 6,000 pages of Federal laws and regulations on which more than $132 billion was spent in 1985. ”

“ If the State [Pg 155] does for the individual what he ought to do for himself what will be the effect on character, initiative, enterprise? It is a question now not of freedom, but of responsibility, and it is one that has caused many searchings of heart, and in respect of which opinion has undergone a remarkable change. Thus, in relation to poverty the older view was that the first thing needful was self-help. It was the business of every man to provide for himself and his family. ”

“ Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. ”

“ And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!
If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction society, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. ”

“ He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. ”

“ The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them.
And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. ”

“ Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. ”

“ Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes; for that for ever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power not confident but agent. ”

“ The maxim, or injunction, to which a study of capital leads us is, Get capital. In a community where the standard of living is high, and the conditions of production are favorable, there is a wide margin within which an individual may practise self-denial and win capital without suffering, if he has not the charge of a family. That it requires energy, courage, perseverance, and prudence is not to be denied. Any one who believes that any good thing on this earth can be got without those virtues may believe in the philosopher's stone or the fountain of youth. ”

“ We must introduce a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the government--a balance that favors greater individual freedom and self-reliance. ”

“ A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. ”

“ We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. ”

“ I'm talking about real and lasting emancipation, because the success of welfare should be judged by how many of its recipients become independent of welfare. Further, after seeing how devastating illness can destroy the financial security of the family, I am directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Otis Bowen, to report to me by year end with recommendations on how the private sector and government can work together to address the problems of affordable insurance for those whose life savings would otherwise be threatened when catastrophic illness strikes. ”

“ It is time to nurture them and see which ones can catch fire and become guiding lights. States have begun to show us the way. They've demonstrated that successful welfare programs can be built around more effective child support enforcement practices and innovative programs requiring welfare recipients to work or prepare for work. Let us give the States more flexibility and encourage more reforms. Let's start making our welfare system the first rung on America's ladder of opportunity, a boost up from dependency, not a graveyard but a birthplace of hope. ”

“ We've also pressed ahead on fundamental reforms to make the welfare system reflect the basic values that have stood up so well for so long, that if you bring a child into this world, you must take responsibility for that child; that Government will not subsidize irresponsible or reckless behavior; that welfare is a second chance, not a way of life. ”

“ At the end of the cold war as we move into this information age, there are many areas where we can work together to improve the lives of hard-working Americans: reducing the size of the Federal Government, reducing the burden of unfunded requirements on State and local governments, requiring Congress to live under the same laws it imposes on people in the private sector, the line-item veto to control unnecessary spending, and giving more flexibility to States to reform their welfare and health care systems. ”

“ Starting in fiscal 1984, the Federal Government will assume full responsibility for the cost of the rapidly growing Medicaid program to go along with its existing responsibility for Medicare. As part of a financially equal swap, the States will simultaneously take full responsibility for Aid to Families with Dependent Children and food stamps. This will make welfare less costly and more responsive to genuine need, because it'll be designed and administered closer to the grass roots and the people it serves. ”

“ Meanwhile, in the last 2 years, we've cut through Federal redtape to give 26 States, more than half the country, the authority to conduct their own welfare reform experiments. And Republicans and Democrats now agree on tougher child support enforcement. They all agree that we have to have national action on tougher child support enforcement because 30 percent or more of the child support cases that are delinquent cross State boundaries. ”

“ Two years ago from this podium, I asked five companies to lead a national effort to hire people off welfare. Tonight, our Welfare to Work Partnership includes 10,000 companies who have hired hundreds of thousands of people. And our balanced budget will help another 200,000 people move to the dignity and pride of work. I hope you will support it.
We must do more to bring the spark of private enterprise to every corner of America, to build a bridge from Wall Street to Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to our Native American communities. ”

“ Our interests are at bottom common; in the long run we go up or go down together. Yet more and more it is evident that the state, and if necessary the nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations which are its creatures; particularly as regards the great business combinations which derive a portion of their importance from the existence of some monopolistic tendency. The right should be exercised with caution and self restraint; but it should exist, so that it may be invoked if the need arises. ”

“ The relations of individuals are, then, tending to be regulated, on the one hand, by contractual justice; on the other hand, by the moral obligation felt by each individual, an obligation not enforced by any exercise of the power of the State, but supported only by public opinion. The end we set before ourselves is no longer the welfare of the State, to be attained at any cost to individual liberty; it is rather an ideal of justice for every person, to which the welfare of the State must be, if necessary, subordinated. ”

“ The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centres. Upon the success of our experiment much depends; not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations ”

“ That means the negation of all government, and the negation of all government of course means the negation of popular government; and that therefore there must be restraint, and that therefore a free people had merely substituted self-restraint for external restraint; and the permanence of our freedom as a people, the permanence of our liberties, depends upon the way in which we show and exercise that self-restraint.
There must be much more than good laws to make a good people. The man whose morality is expressed simply in the non-infringement of the law is a pretty poor creature. ”

“ No piled-up wealth, no splendor of material growth, no brilliance of artistic development, will permanently avail any people unless its home life is healthy, unless the average man possesses honesty, courage, common-sense, and decency, unless he works hard and is willing at need to fight hard ”