Our Foreign Policy and Treaties

An interesting article that brings to light our entangling alliances.

'But Beckley concludes that today American wars are due less to these treaties and more to "the tendency of U.S. leaders to define national interests expansively, to exaggerate the magnitude of foreign threats, and to underestimate the costs of military intervention."'

http://theweek.com/speedreads/558111/obliged-war-67-countries-including-cuba

"The Founders’ Model of Welfare Actually Reduced Poverty" via The Daily Signal

This is the most important article I've read regarding American history and Welfare policy.

There has been a shift from a more common sensed approach based on the understanding of human character. A system that "helps drive people out of poverty" and "minimize incentives" that lead to abuse of the system. It has  become more of a "generational inheritance." Welfare has become more of a "living wage."

Another thing that this article pushes is something I've been advocating personally; which is more State autonomy and local administration of welfare benefits. A more localized approach can help eliminate abuse and more accurately weed out who are truly in need of it.

Here is an excerpt:

Rather than making welfare a generational inheritance, Franklin thought it should assist the poor in overcoming poverty as expediently as possible: “I am for doing good to the poor.…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”

Moreover, local, rather than federal, officials administered this welfare, since they were more likely to know the particular needs of recipients and could distinguish between the deserving poor (the disabled and involuntarily unemployed) and the undeserving poor (those capable of work but preferring not to).

The Founders sought to provide aid in a way that would help the deserving poor but minimize incentives for recipients to act irresponsibly. They wanted to protect the rights of taxpayers by preventing corruption and abuses in welfare aid.

Above all, the Founders saw the family and life-long marriage as the primary means of support for everyone, rich and poor alike.

http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/30/the-founders-model-of-welfare-actually-reduced-poverty/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=thffacebook

Listen up, Millennials! 80's Awareness!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09q04Dlh7r8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Are we still as a people still independent?

As Benjamin Franklin said and our Founders knew, those who trade liberty for safety get neither.
 by John Heckel.

Our Founders did not fight a revolution against tyranny simply to institute a similar government on their own soil. It’s been 237 years since they declared not only their independence but their rejection of a long train of abuses and tyrannies. Reading the Declaration of Independence today I find that their concerns still resonate as government insists that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, and pat down any individual at any time.

As Benjamin Franklin said and our Founders knew, those who trade liberty for safety get neither. This is not simply a Republican versus Democrat issue. It is about people who believe in the Constitution and individual rights versus politicians in both parties who don’t. This isn't about party, but about people who believe in limited government against those who think it is unlimited.

We should heed the Founders’ warning: “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” Today’s government is one that our Founders warned us about.

[I had this published in the Pensacola News Journal on Independence Day 2013]