Reader’s Comments

Issue 212 – September 26, 2012

Editor: “Ryan’s Welfare Morality” on the principle of subsidiarity is a great piece. Congratulations. You’ve got it right. Onward, Ed Feulner

Editor: Your editorial “Ryan’s Welfare Morality” was most timely since I just lectured on subsidiarity yesterday in my American Theory class. If you look carefully at the Virginia plan that was submitted to the Philly Convention (James Madison presumably was chief author of this), you will find the subsidiarity principle employed in the division of powers between the states and national governments –i.e., national powers extend to matters over which the states can’t effectively handle (e.g. defense and commerce). Best, perhaps, if we had left it this way rather than enumerate. Nevertheless, federalism as we practice it isn’t near the equivalent of subsidiarity; we have turned the matter over to the Court and constitutional lawyers as if somehow the proper division of authority can be derived from the language of the Constitution. It can’t. I’ve written a good piece on this, probably one of my best (http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=539&loc=fs). If nothing else our discourse surrounding federalism is all mixed up. I do think conservatives tend to think more along the lines of subsidiarity, though (God knows) we’ve also got our share of lawyers with restricted vision. I know what I suggest in the article will never come to pass. That in itself is a reflection on how far our representative institutions have sunk. George Carey, Georgetown University

Editor: “Ryan’s Welfare Morality” is a superb piece on the principle of subsidiarity. Jameson Campaigne

Editor: “Ryan’s Welfare Morality” is all well and good but I believe Paul Ryan is thinking/talking about getting people like illegals and career welfare bums off the rolls.  They are NOT “needy”. AAMOF they make more than most working-class people and they darned sure get more than US People who paid into the SSA for many, many years, while working our butts off, hoping to retire with dignity BECAUSE of paying this “insurance”. It would be a blessing to get those off the welfare rolls who are NOT deserving of our heritage.  If the SS had been left as it started and was intended, there would be eniugh $$$ in there to sustain those paying into it for generations.  But thanks to communist/socialists like Lyndon Johnson, who put OUR money into the General Fund (read: Pork Trough), we are essentially broke. Maybe R&R will take care of some of these glaring problems, but I sincerely doubt the Handlers of the NWO will let them get away with any of those “shenanigans”. Anyway… God bless America and Americans! Robert D

Editor: “Ryan’s Welfare Morality” is fine but when will his boss Romney get into the battle? Mister nice guy might plan to go home in Nov and dream of what might have been. Ralph

Editor: I certainly hope Jeffrey Folks is correct in his “Capitalism’s Crisis” that the American people will cast their votes in favor of democracy and capitalism, and against the godless authoritarianism of the left. Americans who do not need to be subsidized are looking for subsidies as reimbursement for taxes paid because they/we resent that our tax payments are being squandered by government. Government is not just squandering our tax payments through welfare but through support of things we don’t even believe in like abortion.  I don’t know where the American people got the idea that government is a business that creates income rather than an agency that gets it funds from Americans who create income.  Elaine Boyle

Editor: Regarding Jeffrey Folks’ “Capitalism’s Crisis, I offer the following.” Original Chinese Proverb: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Latest Chinese Proverb: “Give a man a welfare check, a cell phone, cash for his clunker, food stamps, section 8 housing, Medicaid, 100 weeks of unemployment checks, a 40-ounce malt liquor, needles, drugs, contraceptives, and designer Air shoes and he will vote Democrat for a lifetime.” Rod Carnahan