By: Ted Nugent
With the exception of Thomas Jefferson’s words “when in the course of human events” written in the Declaration of Independence and President Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg of “a government of the people, for the people and by the people,” there are no words more powerful in the American experience than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream…” which he so powerfully and eloquently delivered 50 years ago on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Dr. King would be pleased to know that 50 years after his speech the “manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” have been thoroughly broken.
While the stains of institutional racism have faded into our nation’s past, Dr. King’s dream of economic equality remains unfulfilled for many black Americans who remain mired in poverty.
Just one year after Dr. King delivered his memorable speech, President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society began a systematic and engineered welfare juggernaut that would do more damage, cause more harm and become responsible for more destruction to black America than the evils of slavery and the KKK combined.
President Johnson’s Great Society’s War on Poverty has turned out to be, for all practical and statistical purposes, a War on Black America.
Prior to the Great Society’s liberal-engineered campaign to wreak untold havoc on black America, black Americans enjoyed a divorce rate lower than white Americans, illegitimacy rates were less than 10 percent, abortion rates were low, high school drop out rates were low, and gangland violence in black communities was virtually non-existent. Tragically today those numbers are the exact opposite.
Something went horribly wrong. What has caused the economic, social and cultural destruction to black America is the result of federal and state governments meddling for the past 50 years where they have no business and no constitutional authority to meddle.
Since 1964 Americans have thrown almost $16 trillion at a War on Poverty. Based on what has happened to black Americans, there is no argument that this monumental stack of hard-earned taxpayer cash has largely been wasted.
Dr. King would hang his head in shame over the liberal-engineered welfare juggernaut that will continue to destroy black America. That is not a dream, but a nightmare.
According to the Heritage Foundation and based on Mr. Obama’s own budget projections, federal and state welfare spending will be over $10 trillion dollars over the next decade. This equates to $250,000 for each person living in so-called poverty, or $1 million for a poor family of four.
We are not going to “invest,” much less bribe our way out of poverty. If that were possible, the 16 trillion we have already spent would have surely eliminated poverty by now. All it has achieved is more poverty, more despair and more helplessness, rewarding otherwise capable people to literally give up.
America has spent far more on welfare than all of the wars we’ve fought – combined. We have lost the War on Poverty because poverty cannot be defeated with stacks of dollars. Poverty can only be defeated by individuals making wise choices in their own self-interest.
Dr. King said, “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.” Now is that time.
It is time for people of all races, colors, sexes and political stripes to admit that spending more money is not the answer to poverty, but rather the problem. We can only dream Dr. King would surely agree.