I know—the title is a cliché as old as liberalism itself,
but evidently it can’t be said enough. Anyway, we should not be surprised. We
have Obamacare and Obamaphones, so we may as well have Obamameals. Actually
we’ve had Obamameals for awhile now, but you may just now be hearing of them.
Yesterday,
the
AP reported that in
Boston,
school children carrying lunchboxes could become “a more unusual sight as
parents learn about a federal program that is now providing all public school
students in the city with free breakfast and lunch.”
The AP continues, “The nation's oldest school system has
joined a program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that has spread to 10
states and the
District of Columbia
that offers students two free meals every school day, whether or not their
families can afford them.”
Julia
would be proud.
A
column
in USA Today last year noted, “Twelve million kids currently eat school
breakfasts, but that number will soar. Under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA)
of 2010, all schools with 40% low-income students will be allowed to offer free
breakfasts and lunch to all students.” As the AP also notes, the HHFKA
authorized $4.5 billion in new federal spending. The program will be available
across the country next (2014-2015) school year.
According
to the White House, the additional funding for the Child Nutrition Program
is for 10 years. Do you think it will ever end? How long before we hear that it
is the “right” of every (public) school child in
America to be fully fed while they
attend their government schools? After all, indoctrination goes down much
easier on a full stomach.
The AP reported that Efrain Toledano, principal of the Maurice J. Tobin School
in Boston, said
that he expects the program will cut down on potential disruptions at the K-8
school by easing hunger pangs that could be linked to classroom misbehavior. “We
know that calm stomachs means calm students who are ready to learn in
classrooms.”
Well now, combine the effects of a “calm stomach” with those
of Ritalin and Adderall, and our government schools will soon provide a great
setting for the next season of The Walking Dead. (Gives new meaning to the
movement to arm teachers, huh?)
What’s more, it seems that much of the motivation behind
expanding the availability of “free” meals to kids in government schools is to
remove the stigma that might come from receiving a handout. Just as when food
stamps were replaced with EBT cards, liberals want all of us to feel better
about receiving things from “Obama’s stash.”
“Besides easing hunger,” noted the AP, “school officials
said, the program helps erase a stigma that plagued some students from poor
families.” Yes, because it’s all about making everyone “feel” better, no matter
the cost to the country, and in spite of the fact that “the USDA found that
stigma had little to do with deterring kids from accepting free [meals].”
With the amount of welfare handed out by Big Government
these days, is anyone surprised that there is little “stigma” attached to
receiving a government handout! When all of us are standing there holding our
hands out for the next Big Government benefit, there will be absolutely no
stigma! And notice the lesson the children in government schools are getting:
everybody’s got to be “equal,” and it’s the job of those in power to make sure
this happens. It’s little wonder that minds bent in such a way grow up and vote
for Democrats.
Of course this is just more rotten fruit born of the tree of
liberalism that resides in the heart of
Barack’s Candy
Mountains. As I alluded to above, President Obama signed HHFKA into law in
December of 2010. HHFKA easily passed the Democratic led House and Senate. So
again, thanks to liberals and their party, we now have yet another Big
Government program that not only will never die (until the collapse of the
republic, that is), but almost certainly will grow.
Democrats will trumpet it as a success, and the moment
anyone tries to whittle back the program, or dare-say kill it, they will howl
that only a villain would take food away from a hungry child. The media will
get their marching orders from the liberals in D.C. and provide the
low-information voters with just the right amount of propaganda to ensure that the
seemingly perpetual cycle of Big Government rolls on.
How ironic it was that a liberal proudly told us, “the era
of Big Government is over.” Instead, we now have tens-of-millions of Americans
who have come to believe not only that their lunch should be “free,” but also
their health care, their transportation, their education, their phones, their
housing, and so on. Also, more and more parents will be conditioned to the idea
that it’s the government’s responsibility to feed their children.
We recently witnessed evidence of such conditioning with the
fast-food worker walkouts. Millions of young Americans (who probably got their
government school meals for “free”) have been duped into believing that it is
the role of Big Government to ensure that they be paid a “living wage,” no
matter the level of skill and effort that their job requires.
As Rush
pointed out, this is about control. “The smaller people's dreams, the
easier time you're gonna have controlling them. The more simple their desires,
the more simple and less complex, the easier it's gonna be to control them.”
Prior to the 2012 presidential election, after Obama
presented us with his “entitlement darling,” Julia, I wrote that I hoped that
there were not too many like her who vote. How naïve of me. Ben Franklin warned
us, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money,
that will herald the end of the republic.” Must it come to this before
enough eyes will be opened?
Copyright 2013, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason
