Liberals tell us they want to help us. If we will only elect them to office, they will produce a cornucopia of benefits. They will thus give us everything we ever dreamt of and, as a result, we will be eternally happy. The downtrodden in particular will be released from their desperation.
Nonetheless, this is a canard! It is a whopper of the first magnitude. To begin with, the progressives do not have the wherewithal to produce what they promise to deliver. The costs of what they project are so great that no nation has the resources to implement them.
Second, the personal costs of these alleged benefits are much higher than assumed. The provision of free goodies requires people to assign their freedom to their presumed benefactors. In exchange for wealth and security, these recipients are asked to depend on the good will of their saviors.
In fact, dependency is a trap. It is a prescription for endless misery. By assuming the role of helpless children, those who ask to be protected from every potential hazard open themselves up to exploitation. This is a bad bargain.
Dependency has many hidden costs. Anyone who works in a welfare system (as I did) quickly becomes aware of this. Their clients are not perpetually joyful. Although their physical needs are guaranteed, most are deeply discontented. For a majority, life is a burden.
Why, you ask? The answer is simple. People who are extremely dependent surrender two things of inestimable value. One is personal control of their lives. The other is a sense of achievement. These may sound like small potatoes, whereas they are anything but.
Let us start with personal control. We must, of course, admit that no one has total control. Life is filled with contingencies we can never correct, nor even manage. Some things always go wrong such that we are inevitably exposed to undeserved pain.
Even so, the more control we have the better. When we possess the power to protect ourselves, we usually feel safer. This is because we know that we will be there for ourselves. Conversely when we delegate our welfare to others, we are taking a leap of faith. These folks might not defend us since they really don’t care about us.
Children perforce experience the anxieties of relying on the charity of others. Their undeveloped skills and lack of experience make them vulnerable. They therefore have no choice but to depend on their parents. All the same, don’t they work overtime to break free of this need?
The other major deficit of excess dependency is the loss of individual achievement. In order to feel good about ourselves, we humans must accomplish worthwhile goals. We have to have purposes that are within our power to attain. In the absence of these, we not respected—by others or ourselves.
Dependency robs us of self-chosen objectives. Our protectors now specify these for us. Nor are we personally able to accomplish these end points. It is now others who are in charge of reaching them. As a consequence, they get the credit, not us.
The impact of this shortfall is also on display among welfare clients. They tend to drift along with the tide. With nothing to work for or to feel pride in realizing, their lives are empty. These folks are not successful because they are not allowed to be.
This is crucial because we humans need to be successful. Since we measure our worth against others, if we achieve nothing, we are automatically inferior to those who do. Excessive dependency thus means we have relinquished our ability to move ahead.
To be sure, if we depend on ourselves we could fail. Our goals might remain unfulfilled and our reputations reduced to tatters. Nonetheless, the freedom to try means we have the opportunity to win. Indeed, because we could lose, winning is that much more desirable.
If this is true, then progressivism is a recipe for desolation. All of that free schooling, health care, housing and income deprives us of the chance to feel good about ourselves. The fact is that when we become mendicants, we drop to the bottom of the social hierarchy.
The young do not realize this. Accustomed to being dependent upon their parents, they are not yet sure they can rely on themselves. Still, we adults should be past this. When offered the prospect of becoming the servants of government bureaucrats, we ought to have the good sense to decline.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Kennesaw State University
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