Tea Party Conservative hero Ben Carson went on The View earlier this week and was given a platform to espouse his views with little push back. The Conservative media went gaga over his performance saying he's the best conservatives values spokesman around. Or how wonderful a job he did explaining to liberals how stinky their stinky welfare system is.
Here's what he said that made them shine with glee:
When you rob someone of their incentive to go out there and improve themselves, you are not doing them any favors. When you take somebody and pat them on the head and say, ‘There, there, you poor little thing. … Let me give you housing subsidies, let me give you free health care because you can’t do that.’ What would be much more empowering is to use our intellect and our resources to give those people a way up and out.”
In Carson's worldview, the poors should never get their grubby little fingers on any type of government assistance because it makes then moochers of the worst kind. But when we look at the facts of his own life, a common theme emerges regarding the welfare state.
See here's the thing, though. It turns out that for some strange reason, the evil welfare system didn't seem to destroy the incentive for his own mother to go out and make things better for her and her family:
No doubt, Mother Carson deserves tremendous credit, but – in the words of a political sound bite from the last presidential election – she didn’t do it alone. Carson, in his book, tells how his grades improved tremendously when a government program provided him with free eyeglasses because he could barely see. Not only that, in “Gifted Hands” we read this nugget: “By the time I reached ninth grade, mother had made such strides that she received nothing but food stamps. She couldn’t have provided for us and kept up the house without that subsidy.”
What a lying liar. He's so typical of right wingers who have used government assistance to advance their own lives and then want to destroy it for others just like Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Marco Rubio. Their personal cases are always so much different than yours and mine when the time comes that we might need government assistance to help survive. I can make the case that when you rob from poor people the help that welfare, unemployment, food stamps, etc, gives them, you are aiding in their downward spiral and despair.
Let's see why Ben Carson believes his welfare assistance was justified which makes him a principled Conservative and your government assistance makes you a losing moocher.
It’s hard not to see Carson’s own upbringing coming into view here. He grew up in meager surroundings in Detroit and Boston, in a family that made use of public assistance programs like food stamps. The culture was different then, Carson insists. “I think there was a time when people were not proud of taking handouts,” he said. “There were more people who did have that drive and determination. You do what you have to do."
So according to Carson, it's okay to accept government assistance as long as you feel bad about it. And he seems to think that nobody who is on welfare today feels shame, cause apparently nobody seems to demonize it or anything. But even so, what about all that stuff about self reliance and bootstrapping and whatnot? Once you accept government aid, doesn't Ronald Reagan begin weeping from White Heaven?
I didn't see any of the conservatives cheering on Ben Carson's attacks on welfare even mention how much he and his family depended on it to make him the man that he is today. This is the shameful modus operandi that Cheryl Chumley, the Washington Times and their colleagues operate with each and everyday.
