By Paul Nachman
05/25/2011
My friend and VDARE.com colleague Brenda Walker’s clear disapproval evident in her main-page article Free Food Nation (Immigrants Welcome, Of Course) (May 24, 2011) doesn’t reflect truly advanced thinking.For some of that potent stuff, we turn to the Manhattan Institute’s Sol Stern, who wrote on October 26, 2010 (The Propaganda in Our Ed Schools)
At the Radical Math conference I attended three years ago, University of Massachusetts Professor Marilyn Frankenstein proposed that elementary school teachers who truly care about social justice should instruct their students that in a "just society," food would "be as free as breathing the air."Of course Stern’s observation was a wry one, but at least he'd been in direct contact with such advanced thinking — breathing the same air as such thinkers.
A genuine and prominent advanced thinker in this mold is Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu, whose nomination to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was just filibustered to oblivion by most Senate Republicans (and one Democrat). Toward the end of an ~80-page Yale Law Journal article from 2006 on Education, Equality, and National Citizenship [PDF], Liu remarked, offhandedly:
Welfare provision in the form of cash assistance, food stamps, and public housing may prevent destitution (a worthy objective in its own right), but such provision, with its accompanying stigma of dependence and bureaucratic control, does not assure its beneficiaries the dignity of full membership in society. Beyond a minimal safety net, the legislative agenda of equal citizenship should extend to systems of support and opportunity that, like education, provide a foundation for political and economic autonomy and participation. The main pillars of the agenda would include basic employment supports such as expanded health insurance, child care, transportation subsidies, job training, and a robust earned income tax credit.So, obviously, government-provided three square meals a day, plus snacks, are the baseline for a decent society, part of proud individuals' "economic autonomy." And Brenda needs to quell her antediluvian clucking on the subject.
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