So, I have a friend who describes himself as conservative (although he is probably more of a conservative libertarian) and thinks of me as a liberal (although I am more of an idealistic pragmatist). Anyway, this friend is against any sort of public assistance like welfare & food stamps.  He thinks that they enable people to be weak and to continue to shirk responsibility for themselves and their actions.

While I don’t agree with his conclusion exactly, I do understand his reasoning. My friend has a family member who is drug addict and who has lost her children. She has had all sorts of help, both public and private, over the years and used it not to better herself and to provide for her children, but has scammed the system in order to party more. My friend believes that her addictions, lack of initiative & responsibility and her general downward spiral were enabled by all this help and that if she wasn’t able to rely  on those monthly checks and other assistance she would have had no choice, but to clean herself up, get a job and otherwise lead a productive life.

I just don’t know. I don’t know his family member well enough, but I do think there are people who will go down into the deep of addiction and self-hate no matter what their circumstances are. I also know that our personal experiences without a doubt help shape our social, cultural and political outlooks.

My personal feelings about whether public assistance is good or bad for people come from my personal experience. Up until the time I was seven, my mother and I lived with one drunken abusive man after another. I was never beaten, although I routinely saw my mother beaten and verbally abused,  but I was generally terrorized by the whole experience. I was a fearful, sad little ragamuffin of a girl.

But when I was seven, my mother left the worst of the men and moved out on her own. She received food stamps, welfare and help from my grandparents. She was also a cocktail waitress. More importantly though, she started community college and eventually earned her Master’s Degree in Psychology. What that meant was that we never lived with another abusive man out of necessity again. She was able to earn enough money to care for children.

Now, life was still not a picnic. My mother had underlying mental illness issues that ensured that, but I didn’t feat for her life and mine on a daily basis…something which can be really horrible for a child’s growth and development into a relatively normal adult.

I am now an adult and, although a little weird and not without some baggage, I am relatively well-adjusted. I credit this to the public assistance and other help my mother received which enabled her to pull herself together and at least provide a more stable environment for her children.

My mother is now back on public assistance, and has been since I was a young adult, as a result of her mental issues & persoanlity flaws, but it’s just her now as all of her children are out of the house.

Back to my friend, while my experience with public assistance is one of the best possible outcome given the players and circumstances, his is not so apparent.

Who’s right? If that’s even the appropriate question. And what can be said about our social, moral and ultimately political response to these two stories?

If my friend is right, is it okay to give assistance to all knowing that it is hurting some, while helping others? And if I’m right, does that mean that we give assistance to all knowing that it’s never going to help some, but at least all those resources are going to some who make use of them?

I’m not sure, but I do know my reaction is to give assistance to all those who appear to need it and hope for the best. And my friend’s reaction is to enact tough love hoping that will solve the need some have for assistance.