While most American Jews and other liberals believe in the intrinsic goodness and moral superiority of liberal policies, powerful arguments can be made that liberal policies actually diminish a society’s moral character. Many individual liberals are wonderful people, but the policies they advocate tend to make a people worse.
First, the bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. If the state will take care of me, my parents, my children and my neighbors, why should I?
This is why Western Europeans, people who have lived in welfare states far longer than Americans have, give less charity and volunteer less time to others than do Americans of the same socioeconomic status. They have been raised to believe the state will and should take care of everyone.
The greatest description of American civilization was written in the early 19th century by a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville. One of the differences distinguishing Americans from Europeans that he most marveled at was how much Americans — through their myriad associations — took care of one another.
Until President Franklin Roosevelt began the until-now inexorable movement of America toward the European welfare state — vastly expanded later by other Democratic presidents, especially President Lyndon Johnson and his “Great Society” and President Barack Obama with his 2,000 pages of laws governing health care — Americans took responsibility for one another and for themselves far more than they do today. Churches, Rotary Clubs, free-loan societies and other voluntary associations were ubiquitous. As the state grew, however, all these associations declined. In Western Europe, they have virtually all disappeared.
The welfare state citizen’s instinct upon seeing anyone, including one’s own parents or children, in need is to go to the state for help. If you think this makes for morally superior people, people with greater moral character, then our definition of a good person differs.
Second, the welfare state, though often well intentioned, is nevertheless a Ponzi scheme. Conservatives have known this for nearly a century. But now, any honest person must acknowledge it. The welfare state is predicated on collecting money from today’s workers to pay for those who paid in before them. But, today’s workers don’t have enough money to sustain the scheme, and there are too few of them to do so.
As a result, virtually every welfare state in Europe, and many American states, like California, are going broke. For at least a generation, there have not been enough citizens to sustain such a welfare state.
Third, citizens of liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic. The great preoccupation of vast numbers of Brits, Frenchmen, Germans and other Western Europeans are how much vacation time they will have and how early they can retire and be supported by the state. Those are the issues over which Western Europeans routinely riot.
