School Meal Program Causes Imbalance In Delicate Family Ecology
by Frederick B. Meekins | View comments |
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Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams plans to institute a program where government school students in the city could receive three meals per day at government expense.
From ecology, it has been learned that a complex interplay of factors and forces results in the balance of nature that environmentalists insist can be easily thrown out of whack should any one of these readings stray too far from the optimal norms. As the pinnacle of the food chain, a number of these principles apply to human beings and their societies as well.
For example, one of the strongest human desires is to copulate and produce children. This urge is kept in check by the responsibility of having to provide for and take care of the offspring that could potentially result from the physical intermingling of man and woman, preferably in the context of binding matrimony.
As such, most rational people discipline themselves to have no more children than they are capable of taking care of. However, Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams wants to upset the delicate balance by instituting a program where government school students in the city could receive three meals per day at government expense.
Supporters say the program would “take a big step towards ending child hunger.” However, such a proposal hardly has the best interests of children at heart.
For by taking over the task of procuring and distributing the nutritional allotments of some 20,000 children, the government is unhinging from parenthood one of the fundamental reasons for this most important of human undertakings, namely, providing for the kids you yourself had the fun of making.
Very few are going to have the courage to admit it, but often the families enrolled in these assistance programs are not headed by model parents. Now being freed almost entirely of the burden of providing three meals a day, what is to prevent parents tottering along the edge of delinquency from spending the newly freed money on luxuries they cannot afford, such as plasma screen TV’s and nose piercings – or to revel in additional promiscuity, producing additional babies they have no intentions of raising properly?
Those wracked by the sex fever gripping our society will invoke their favorite refrain that it’s nobody’s business how those on public assistance conduct their lives. Maybe so — if these people had kept their business to themselves and not come forward to suckle off the public teat. But once these people come forward and admit they are unable to effectively run their own lives by demanding assorted forms of assistance, the matter becomes the business of all taxpayers.
Another fundamental question few have the courage to ask is, why do the rest of us have to pay for other people’s kids to eat? Frankly, are these kids even starving?
Though the American people have been duped into believing these meals are all that stand between the youngsters that receive them and malnutrition, that is not necessarily the case. For you see, in DC, students are eligible for free breakfasts irrespective of income.
Theoretically, citizens of modest means could end up financing the meals of the well-to-do, such as members of Congress or successful interest group functionaries. Who’s to say the expanded program won’t invite all comers to dine at the government trough?
Neither is the program simply about the bare nutrition needed to survive. With low-cost stores such as Wal-Mart, Aldi’s, Save-A-Lot, and even Dollar Tree, there is no reason why any self-respecting parent can’t get some kind of food into their offsprings’ bellies.
They might not eat like kings and their parents might have to delay getting that tattoo, but to put it bluntly, no where are these luxuries guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or the Declaration of Independnece for those unwilling to provide for themselves. If they can work their tails in bars and nightclubs, they can work their hands on the jobsite or in the office.
One of the most memorable lines ever uttered on the Simpsons (quite an accomplishment on this television classic with so many memorable moments) was set in the future when Lisa Simpson is President. Milhaus as presidential advisor says to her that the only thing school lunches and midnight basketball got us was a generation of supercriminals who didn’t require sleep.
In many ways, the human economy is as delicate and as beautiful as the natural environment. And like it, should any one of the components be unduly stimulated, the whole system faces the possibility of collapse, with civilized man becoming yet another endangered species.
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http://epistolizer.blogspot.com
Read more articles by Frederick B. Meekins
Totally unfair. What income bracket are you in? It's not the choice between nose piercings and food. It's medical insurance or food. Instead of just judging poor people, try actually looking at their situation without hate and distrust. Not everyone chooses to be poor.
Comment by Nichole | July 19, 2006
All sorts of preconditions, moral or otherwise, should be put on any individuals recieving welfare. For both the impoverished and corporate variety. You behave in a way that benefits the country. Don't like it? Go it alone, then. Create an income and take your chances. Otherwise, Uncle Sam is your daddy. Do as your told or lose your dough.
Comment by Joseph | July 19, 2006
I really dont think its a choice between medical insurance and food. The people I've known who didnt have insurance could very well pay for it if they choose. But its easier to lie about their income and get medical cards from the government. Its the people who take advantage and scam the system who take from those who honestly need the help.
Comment by Kim | July 19, 2006
Otherwise, Uncle Sam is your daddy. Do as your told or lose your dough.
The whole point of this article is that Uncle Sam has no business being anybodies "daddy". Socialism has been tried over and over again, always failing. Does the liberal person not have the mental acuity to see this? Guess not, they keep trying to mandate socialism.
It is not my responsebility to feed your child, clothe your child, house your child, ad nauseum. YOU are responseble for YOUR child.
Comment by Gary Hyde | July 19, 2006
I agree with Meekins. The encroaching Nanny state is eroding not only personal responsibility but also personal freedom. Like parents who pay the bills and feel entitled to set the boundaries for their children, the state, in return for its largesse, generates requirements which citizens must accept and fulfill. Initially, these requirements may be voluntary. Later, they become mandatory instruments of social engineering. I do not want myself or my fellow citizens to be “engineered.” Thank you very much. Let the state keep its money to run its proper business (defense, border security and the like), and let me keep my money to buy in the free marketplace the goods and services I require or desire. This includes taking care of my own health. After trillions of dollars have been spent on the “Great Society” conceived and implemented in the ‘60’s, we still have the same poverty rates. Meanwhile, our family units have been damaged severely. Responsible adults avoid bringing children into a society foundering in the morass of family degradation. Birth rates among such adults reflect this choice. “Cheaper by the Dozen is a quaint fantasy of a bygone era. Meanwhile, in the long term, a society that destroys the breeding cycles of its citizens with such misguided liberal “social engineering,” is dooming itself to impotency in the moiling historical struggle among nations and cultures.
Comment by Bill White | July 20, 2006
My income bracket is the same as those that require this assistance. the only diffrence is that, I choose not to require the government to pay for the pleasure of spreading my genes around, by waiting for the day I can support a family to start one. This is responsible behaviour. I know that you will cry that not every one has the opportunity to make this choice (which is wrong, they always have had choices to make)… but then how much choice are you giving me on supporting other people breeding habits. Simple fact… I didn't have the fun making it.. I don't want you stripping me of my limited resources in the name of charity to make you feel good about helping them. This is just robbing the poor to pay for the support of the lazy and irresponsible.
Comment by Dan | July 20, 2006
Theodore Dalrymple devotes much of his great work, The Underclass, to describing the effects of the loss of the family mealtime. From the basic nutritional aspects (children fed take-out, snack-cakes, soda don't get the right building blocks for physical and mental growth) to the loss of family ties (mothers don't see a need to even cook a meal for the children and fathers see no need to provide the means by which the meals are made)to the absence of family meal time as a pause in the day to solidify family bonds, teach mannerly behavior and self-control. Read The Underclass and you see the future if we don't put a stop to this. And, having been in a school cafeteria and seen entire trays of food being dumped as the "hungry child" retains only the cookie and chocolate milk, then walks down the hall to get a bag of chips and a soda out of the machine, the premise of the program is asinine too. Obesity is the major health problem in the poor child population.
Comment by Julie Mckinley | July 21, 2006