“But so imperfect is this world that even virtuous, idealistic, humanitarian attempts by government “often gang awry.” There is a right way and a wrong way for government to get involved in humanitarian attempts to better the human condition. One wrong way is for government—especially a distant, impersonal federal government—too easily to become a tyrant, too easily to become inefficient, meddling, bureaucratizing, corrupting, enervating. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized this truth. Though usually thought of as the founder of the welfare state in America, FDR very early recognized a grave danger our nation had better avoid.

Roosevelt warned Congress in 1935, as no Democrat after Lyndon Johnson could have written: “The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration to the national fiber. To dole out relief … is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”

Excerpt From: Novak, Michael. “Writing from Left to Right.” Image, 2013-09-03. iBooks.

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