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June 17, 2005
When Welfare Was Considered Shameful
In a review of the movie Cinderella Man in the July 4 edition of The American Conservative, Steve Sailer writes of the hero of the movie:
In 1934, Braddock's faithful manager . . . signed him up on only a day's notice to play human punching bag to a heavyweight contender. Despite having gone without food so his kids could eat, Braddock knocked out the big galoot. He then upset two more prominent names. Braddock's purses allowed him to reimburse the government for his family's welfare payments, a gesture Joe Louis later emulated.
Imagine that! Two men actually felt obligated to pay back the welfare money they had received, probably out of a sense of shame and embarrassment that they had been reduced to accepting it in the first place.
Can you envision anyone doing this today? No, instead we are treated to Americans whose sole purpose in life, it seems, is to extract ever more money from their fellow man via the long arm of government. Those who suggest that maybe they shouldn't be doing this--or even that they should simply be satisfied with the amount of stolen money they're already getting--are the ones who are shamed and embarrassed into shutting up. How the mighty have fallen.
Posted by Mike Tennant at June 17, 2005 04:18 PM
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