Putting us all on the dole
By Wesley Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
One in seven of all Americans is now on food stamps,
but that’s not enough for the bureaucrats at the
Department of Agriculture.
They’re determined to increase that number, and to
do that they must eliminate the “mountain pride” of
certain Americans, who value personal responsibility
and independence above all else, and get them on the
government dole.
It’s something like ethnic cleansing, or would be,
if the feds mocked the pride and culture of any
other ethnic group, whether in the mountains,
valleys, flat lands or somewhere else.
By
“mountain pride,” they’re talking about the
descendants of the Scots-Irish settlers who pushed
the frontier from the Atlantic coast into the hills
and mountains of Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama and
the Carolinas, and later into the Ozarks of Missouri
and Arkansas. These are the Americans that Jim Webb,
the Democratic senator from Virginia and author of
the much-acclaimed book, “Born Fighting, How the
Scots-Irish Shaped America,” calls “poor but proud –
and stubborn as hell.”
They arrived on the continent desperately poor, as
described by the historian Vernon Louis Parrington.
“So armed with axes, their seed potatoes and the
newly invented rifle, they plunged into the
backwoods to become our great pioneering race.
Scattered thinly through a long frontier, they
constituted the outposts and buffer settlements of
civilization. A vigorous breed, hardy, assertive,
individualistic, thrifty, trained in the democracy
of the Scottish kirk, they were the material out of
which Jacksonian democracy was to be fashioned, the
creators of that western type which in politics and
industry became ultimately the American type.”
Just the sort of material, you might say, to
frustrate a community organizer with illusions of
hauteur. Nevertheless, community organizers don’t
quit easily. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program, or SNAP, of the Agriculture Department gave
“a Gold Award” recently to the local social workers
in tiny Jefferson, N.C., between Husk and Deep Gap
and not far from the Tennessee border, for bravely
confronting “mountain pride” and increasing
food-stamp participation in Ashe County by 10
percent.
“Hearing from the outreach worker that benefits
could be used to purchase seeds and plants for their
gardens turned out to be a very important strategy
in counteracting what they described as ‘mountain
pride’ and appealed to those who wished not to rely
on others,” SNAP explains. “Eventually, many
accepted assistance from the Low Income Energy
Assistance Program (LIEAP), the Qualified Medicare
Beneficiary (QMB) program, and others, in some cases
doubling a household’s net income. In 1 year, SNAP
participation increased over 10 percent.” There’s
enough alphabet soup there to feed a medium-sized
multitude.
SNAP has put out a brochure it calls a “toolkit,”
which is shamelessly insensitive since a toolkit
suggests “work,” and this goes athwart the pride of
the dole which the feds are attempting to substitute
for pride in the mountains. A section of the toolkit
called “Common SNAP Myths” tells how important the
feds think it is to reach people who have “beliefs”
and subscribe to “myths” that make them reluctant to
live on relief with charity from strangers.
“Millions of low-income people are not accessing the
nutrition benefits for which they qualify,” the myth
sheet explains. “To be effective, it is important
that our national and local outreach counter myths .
. . among those who . . . have beliefs that
discourage them from enrolling.” Food stamps, argue
the food-stamp pimps, help local business and create
jobs by pumping money into the local economy. The
dole a job creator? Who knew?
The Daily Caller reports that the food-stamp agency
has dispatched agents to overcome mountain pride
with parties and games, and CNN reports that over
the past four months the agency has spent nearly $3
million on radio commercials soliciting Americans to
sign up.
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a Republican who
represents thousands of constituents afflicted with
mountain pride disease (as the feds might describe
it), is particularly concerned that the Department
of Agriculture focuses on trying to reform “culture”
by eliminating long-held cultural beliefs which are
none of the government’s business. “I think it’s a
deep problem,” he tells the Daily Caller, “when
[federal] officials think it is their duty to
overcome ‘mountain pride’ or the American sense of
independence and individual responsibility.”
Neither the senator or anyone else begrudges helping
the hungry or helpless; indeed, it’s a Christian’s
duty, as a Scots-Irishman would readily concede. But
destroying the culture that tamed the frontier and
shaped America will be beyond the power and ability
of a messiah from Chicago.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington
Times