Free Milk

My Dad didn't say much. And I was with him a lot, until he died when I was 34. But when he did talk, people listened.
My first recollection of, or the beginning or our welfare state began when I was sitting in our one room school house that used to sit 2 miles from my present home. President Kennedy was in office and I came home from school to report that a refrigerator had been put in the wash room at school. When I say wash room I don't mean restroom. The toilets were two little buildings out back. We had a wash room where we all lined up to wash our hands with rusty water and a bar of Lava before we could eat. I went home the day they installed the 'fridge' and reported that it had been placed there and it had been stocked with 'FREE' milk from the government. Even though we brought our own sack lunches we were now going to get cold mild for lunch. I thought the reaction to this news would be good from my parents. It wasn't. It was disgust. My Dad's reactions was "Oh Bull." The government shouldn't be involved in that sort of thing. It's up to us to take care of our children and their schooling. Mom replied that they will want something in return.
These were very wise people. They knew the dangers of relinquishing control of anything. They were always completely against any organized farm group saying that being independent and completely backing the free market system was the only answer. He hated the farm programs when they got started.
I'm headed to a statewide meeting. This annual conference is largely to educate us on the brand new ways the federal government is going to tighten their grip around the throats of the counties in our country, and the adverse effects it will have. How they want us to take care of more and more folks and they want to give us 'part' of the money to do it. The mandates keep coming and now this conference will likely have an organist over in the corner of the big hall playing a death dirge for the individuals who are on their way to losing all control of their lives.
The free milk paved the way to a majority of this country (all be it a small majority) who now believe that government is the answer. They can't see 'NO' as a viable answer to the disaster that is looming large. They can't see that we should be letting the free market system work. You know, where the less competitive go out of business and the ones who know how to survive continue getting bigger and hiring more and more people. I'm not against helping someone who is out of work for a short time.
The big problem with extending help to everyone for everything is that you could end up with big cities full of parentless kids in gangs who kill more people in American cities in two months than we lost in Iraq. Who end up in the prison system. Who never were educated. Who grow up with no morals because there was no Dad, and Mom is on welfare and knows that if she can produce another child she can get more money.
You see, there is no end to a free market society. But we already know that there is an end to our country if we continue down this path.
My children were eligible for welfare the whole time we were raising them. We never thought once about accepting any of it. Don't get me wrong, we never lacked for anything we needed. It's just that the bar had been set so low that almost anyone with kids qualified for some sort of help from the government.
Has anyone else noticed that since the time of free milk, we as a country have thrown more and more and more money at all of these social programs and education, and we've ended up with everything getting worse. The number of people getting in line for 'free milk' is getting longer, and longer, and longer instead of shorter. I have a smirk on my face when being absolutely sure of the fact that MONEY IS NOT THE ANSWER I see politicians in the act of giving away the farm in the hope of being re-elected. It's not the politicians fault. It's the voters of this country. They knoweth not what they do.
Now instead of raising the bar, we are about to lay it on the ground. That ought to do the trick.