Benjamin Franklin is famous for his desire to see the Wild Turkey as the symbol of the newly founded United States of America. He called the creature a "noble bird", and it is. It is large, lean and strong. It is at home in, and a master of its environment in the wilderness of America. It is prized by hunters as one of the most difficult game birds to bag. They have remarkable survival skills.

Contrast that with the Butterball you will be cooking up on Thanksgiving Day. The domestic turkey is grotesque in appearance, with a cumbersome body designed for others to feed on and not to elude. Not that it could - it's legs barely support the weight of it's body for the trip to the feed bin. If the feed bin is empty, it does not seek out food. It waits for someone to fill it up.

As to survival skills, well they don't have any. The most famous story about farm turkey intelligence is that one will drown in a rainstorm by looking up at the rain with it's beak open. That could be urban legend, but we'll go with it. It serves our illustration. I'm sure that there is a turkey farmer out there to correct me.

But the point - what is the point? Benjamin Franklin saw the wild turkey as an embodiment of the American ideal - strong, rugged,self-reliant, industrious, and free. Many of us still see this as the American ideal - the way it is supposed to be. It is how all of the American heroes are portrayed - the spirit of "can do" and "will do".

Yet, a growing segment of the population are the Butterballs. Ungainly, slothful, and entirely dependent on someone else. Like the farm turkey who sits and waits for food, it does not occur to them that the food might not come - because it always has.

They have lost, over 3 generations now, the survival skills to thrive off of the farm, and instead have developed survival skills to thrive on the farm. Mostly that consists of getting as much as possible, and fighting with the other farm birds over what is provided. Provided. Everything is provided - by the Farmer. The Farmer is Uncle Sam, and he has the same vested interest in his dependents as the head of Butterball has in his turkeys. Either way, it's bad for the turkey, and good for the farmer.

This is borne out in the contrast between the devastation of New Orleans during Katrina and the leveling of Joplin, MO during the tornadoes this year. While New Orleans residents waited for help, some in the most dire of circumstances, Joplin residents just dug out and started rebuilding. No FEMA help sought, no handouts solicited. Contributions were sent, but they were the gravy, not the meat. Wild turkeys as opposed to farm turkeys.

Camus said that "the welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants". There is also a popular maxim that states the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Americans as a people are good, and generous. We like to help those less fortunate. Historically, that has been accomplished locally by neighbors and friends, churches and local groups of volunteers who gave of their time and money. We do not deny that there have always been poor, but charity was always on a case by case basis, for a temporary time. An individual was for the most part responsible for themselves and their families.

At the onset of the Great Depression, suddenly there was a massive unemployment surge, which was overwhelming the regular charity system. The federal government decided to take on the task.

The dependent culture took it's first breath during this period. I am not one that thinks FDR to be a horrible demon. He had a bunch of new ideas to try - ideas that had not been previously tried with any large scale effort - progressive ideas. The mindset that if we bring all of the best people together we can figure this out and fix the problem.

Unemployment benefits? Nothing wrong with that as a temopray measure. Up until this recession, unemployment benefits were paid for 26 weeks. We're doing 2 years now. Social Security - the Roosevelt idea was you pay in your entire working life and retire at 65. You die at 68 - it's reasonable. Now people regularly live well into their 80's. Who knew? Getting food to women and children? Well, if we're going to do these other things, really, we're going to not feed starving children? The emphasis was still on temporary measure for extreme situations. I'm willing to give Roosevelt a pass on the blame.

The real culprit turns out to have had the best intentions and the worst results - LBJ and his "Great Society" and the "War on Poverty". He approached the War on Poverty with the same zeal and lack of understanding as the War on Vietnam. It wasn't the intention that was bad - easing poverty. It was the execution that exploded a dependent class in this country. The plan, as set up was - We will feed you. We will house you. We will give you money. For as long as you are not working. If you work, we do not pay you.

Women - if your husband leaves, we will pay you more. If you have more children we will pay you more. But not if you work. Or you can work a little, but we will not pay for the babysitter costs. If your situation does not change, you can count on a check from Uncle Sam at tax time - because you are poor. You can use that check to educate yourself, but then you will get a job, and we wont pay you.

It is the turkey farm - domesticated people, completely dependent on the government, because any effort to improve their lot cuts off their cash. As with the farm, a new set of survival skills were developed to make the best of the new environment. Families were shattered. Single-motherhood paid. An underground economy developed to supplement the government money with an untraceable source of income.

Despair replaced hope and that led to an increase in substance abuse - which fed the underground economy. Criminal enterprises thrived and took over. The guys with the big wads of cash and fancy cars were the criminals. Young boys who grew up with no father, saw this and wanted some of the action. Public housing became a new war zone.

We are on our third generation of people lost in this mess. It has decimated the black family in our inner cities. It is attacking Latino families with equal vigor. It has become a way of life for these people whose only obligation is to keep voting Democrat so that their benefits won't be messed with.

Is it unfair to bring up the Democrat label here? We don't think so.  All of these programs came from the progressive arm of the Democrat Party, at times of very limited Republican presence in legislative bodies. We are the first to agree that elections have consequences. These are the consequences. Those who "benefit" from these programs are primarily urban and poor. They vote Democrat in an effort to survive. No one who addresses facts can deny that. We believe that there is a better way than subsistence living on the fringes of society in despair.

A farm is just another word for plantation. The creators of this plantation are the well-intentioned politicians who feast on the poor by getting returned to office to create more poor, who will then be invested in the growing population of dependence. It give credence to those who claim that the politicians DO understand what they are doing, and it serves their purpose.

We can hear them now:

Hey middle-class - they are coming for you. Lost your job? No prospects? At the end of your 2 years of unemployment and desperate? Lost your home? Or are you living as a squatter in what should be your legacy to your family? Have you found the need to, for the first time in your life, go on food stamps? Is each step a little easier because you've lost more dignity with each concession of your self-reliance?

Maybe you haven't been hit as hard. Still you're not spending money. You're afraid to. You know your taxes are going to go up, but not by how much. You own a business? God help you on this white-knuckle ride.

It really doesn't sound like too much of a stretch to say that the only investment of the party currently in charge is in dependence. We are not condemning all Democrats or the Democrat Party historically. Just the zealots in charge right now.

As we said before, FDR had a bunch of new ideas that he threw out there to try. Some worked, some didn't and some got out of hand. LBJ had the greatest of intentions, but worked the solution badly. Clinton got it. The Welfare Reform Act raised more people out of dependence and poverty than any program before or since. It was the crown jewel of the Clinton Presidency. Unfortunately, President Obama has reversed many of the provisions of that Act.

President Obama, who worked the inner cities of Chicago, saw the devastation this dependence-inducing system produced firsthand. Whether by incompetence or design his economic policies are driving more people into the very same system, under the rules that destroyed it's original victims. Well, it wouldn't be the first time he doubled down on a bad idea...

All of us wild turkeys are waking up. Rather than more and more poor climbing into the middle class, as it should be, we are faced with more and more middle class becoming poor. Instead of turkeys leaving the farm to live free, turkeys are entering the farm, accepting dependence, and placing their dignity on the chopping block. That is where all of the farm turkeys wind up. Except the two Obama pardoned last Thanksgiving. They get to live in a zoo. Still dependent.

The wild turkey is being "transformed" into the Butterball. Franklin would be horrified, but not surprised. When asked what sort of government was created he replied "A representative republic, for as long as you can keep it". He also said that "A man who trades essential liberty for temporary security deserves neither." We agree with him on both points and we choose to fight for what Franklin and his wild turkey stood for - the original American ideal. We invite the other wild turkeys to join us

And we invite any of the farm turkeys to join us as well. Hope and change come not from Washington, but from self-reliance. We will teach you how to build it. We understand that it has been beaten out of you over decades. We can set you free, and we will. Stand with us. Your farmer is not your friend. So says Common Sense.

RLB