Because You Never Asked

     (This essay is the second in a series starting with the essay “Welfare” and followed by the essay “Afro-Americans”. It was written in the early 90’s)

     If I were a professor of sociology writing my next book in my ivory tower at Berkeley or Colombia, I might come up with some lovely euphemism like the Excessive Procreation Rate (The EPR) to describe one of the fundamental problems effecting the welfare environment. Not being such, I’ll simply say that there are too many children being born into the welfare world. Although I can’t remember the source, there is a vague recollection of some study or other claiming that welfare moms don’t have more children than the Cathy Lee Gifford kind of mom. Even if this is true, whatever offspring they are having is excessive. In most cases, this child becomes the ward of a singular parent (or maybe “gramma”), a mother who is nowhere ready emotionally, intellectually or financially to raise a child. This situation seems to produce good prize fighters and precious little else.

     Where does this leave the child? Where does it leave the mother? Where is the father? Certainly not on Sesame Street, you can bet on that.

     I suggest that anyone accepting public dollars should have their procreative privileges seriously reduced, perhaps even annulled, until they are off the dole. If one is accepting other people’s money in order to live, such an arrangement must also carry certain responsibilities, such as not adding to that burden. Obviously, sex education, use of contraceptives, etc., should be a part of all this, but I am suggesting something far more drastic. Welfare pregnancies, if possible, should be terminated at taxpayer expense. People coming on the welfare roles with X amount of children, shall be sterilized.

     This might sound overly draconian, especially in a society that prides itself on personal freedom, but living off the money provided by strangers must be considered a special kind of existence. Pure personal freedom, in a complex society, is a fantasy the human race would destroy itself under. All such entities have limits as to what its participants are permitted to do with impunity --- when you must bring your car to a full stop, when and why someone might take another’s life, how high can your neighbor’s fence be, etc. How else could there ever be such things as police, judges and jails?

     This is not to suggest that being on welfare is a crime, but, at the very least, it must be considered a contract the recipient enters into with the broader community providing for them. A contract is a two way street, with both sides getting something in exchange for something given up. In exchange for the recipient’s basic material needs, is it too much to ask that this recipient not add more payees to the agreement?

     Although the money saved by having less mouths to feed is a positive thing, I consider it almost irrelevant in making the above recommendations. The real advantages will be more emotional than economic. These birth control measures are the essential first step in the rehabilitation of the welfare environment. It eliminates the next generation of welfare conditioned people, while providing conditions far more favorable for the social programs the Limbaughnians are always attacking. A teenage girl-child trying to care for a baby has an unneeded burden for her development as a human being. These counter-productive, unnecessary, accidental, ignorance induced pregnancies must be stopped.

     I am fully aware that what I am suggesting is an extreme solution, and yet, I find myself helpless in finding any other avenue of escape (barring our evolution into the sane, just society we should be, a condition that has not yet evidenced even a light at the end of the tunnel). One truly familiar with the rap sneer environments under scrutiny here, would have to empathize with my desperation. They are like enclaves of chaotic neglect within our own borders. The “free market” will never effectively deal with these emotionally brutalized places. Its free wheeling, competitive nature will most likely worsen the problem. Can such an environment produce the kind of “success” our society is premised upon? Which brings me too --- (see essay “Afro-Americans”)