[A recent column by Dr. John Lilly in the Springfield News-Leader of Springfield Missouri gave me cause to fulminate a bit today because of its preposterous assertions. Its title - "Breakfast Plans Boost Nanny State" - hide the fact that the good doctor is complaining that a free breakfast program in the public schools sends all the wrong messages. His column is as close as it comes to a perfectly wrong message. My comments are below, but to really understand the source of my consternation you need to read his column, at least as much of it as you can stomach.]
Enough! With the latest column by Dr. John Lilly (“Breakfast Plan boosts nanny state – January 24, 2012) the News-Leader sponsors new levels of sophistry and perversity. Does he in fact speak for “taxpayers” who believe that the government has no role in feeding hungry children? That Springfield Public Schools will provide a breakfast meal for the children who attend should be a cause for congratulation. Instead, Dr. Lilly finds reason to suspect the motives and condemn the consequences of such a plan. Why? Because the children will ostensibly learn a false lesson: that they can depend upon their government. To translate into more humane terms: that the community around them is concerned about their welfare.
But Dr. Lilly reserves such action for “churches and charities” and, were he living in 19th century England, one would suppose the local parish board of the workhouse. This contemporary Scrooge repeats in his complaint the words “the taxpayers” as if such a phrase ends all debate. As a taxpayer he objects to this” misuse” of his money. The parents of these children are also taxpayers as are their aunts, uncles, grandparents, and distant cousins. Some of them have fought in this nation’s wars and some of them died in them. That he can cast himself and his imagined community of taxpayers against a rabble of ill-fed, ill-clothed peasants who only deserve attention from “churches and charities” adequately discloses his crabbed mentality. Churches and charities certainly play their part in the larger social scheme, but they neither have the means nor the will to take on the social responsibilities of a modern state, especially a secular state. Are churches in the financial position to take on the enormous burdens of social welfare faced by a nation of 300 millions, even considering the fact these institutions are not taxed? Contributions to churches and charities are voluntary, paying taxes is not. That is, of course, what gets under Dr. Lilly’s skin. The reason that the government had to take on this burden, obvious to any schoolchild by the end of the 19th century, is that “churches and charities” were no longer able, if they ever were. We should all be pleased that the essence of Christian virtue has been assumed by our government in its desire to assist the widow, the orphan, the disabled, the hungry, the elderly, and those struggling to find their place – the children.
This fear that public school children are scamming the rest of us out of our hard earned cash seems to be a common refrain these days. Newt Gingrich, a candidate for President in the Republican primaries, has suggested that elementary school children be used to perform janitorial services in their public schools. I do not believe there has existed in living memory such contempt for other people’s children, except when the question of race was involved. Now it appears the tactics that were used to isolate and segregate Blacks in our society have re-emerged, but this time those tactics are directed at economic and social groups rather than strictly racial ones. My faith in “churches and charities” is seriously diminished by the fact that they do not rise up in fury and deal with these “taxpayers” as they deserve. A good caning from the beadle might change their mind.
