Who's Feeding Who?
                    
                  November 17, 2013
                    
                    By Dr. Carl Mumpower
                
                    If you're not familiar with Screwtape and  Wormwood, you might want to look over your shoulder. These mischief makers are  ramrodding America's public policies and maybe yours too.
                How else can one explain educators condemning  inner-city charter schools for poor students while parents conduct street  protests against alternative condemnation to public failure academies? Or  segregation for African-Americans censored as a bad thing while segregation for  American Indians is cheered as a good thing? Or immigration practices  encouraging illegal aliens to risk life and limb to steal a piece of the  American Dream while ignoring the safe and secure employers funding the scheme?  Or doomed-to-fail ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in fantasized connection  to America's freedom?
                SNAP, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance  Program is no exception. Though authorities enthusiastically dispel abuse  assumptions, go to any Craigslist site, drug dealer, or unscrupulous  convenience store for lessons in "snapping" for fun and profit. Then  note that SNAP expenditures expanded 100 percent during Obama's first term -  twice what we invest in the federal highway program.
                Food stamps, or more correctly food cards, are the  equivalent of a "feed the bears" program for humans and hold the same  dangers. Though Screwtape and Wormwood have otherwise convinced the left -  people, like bears, make poor pets. Neither is designed to eat out of  somebody's hand.
                                  I own a '58 Ford diesel tractor. It's a hard  starter. A mechanic told me to try ether. "It will fire that old girl up  faster than a new T-Bird," he said. "Just one thing - if you start  using it plan to keep using it. Sluggish diesels get jitter juice dependent  real fast." People and tractors have that in common.
                Food stamps are really a welfare program for  politicians - lazy politicians - finding it easier to throw other people's  money at problems over real solutions. Our recent meltdown can be well traced  to a governmental mishmash of inefficiency and manipulation. Free food isn't a  replacement for jobs, a sound economy, and mature leadership supporting us in  eating from our own hand.
                C.S. Lewis, the guy who first fingered Screwtape  and Wormwood as Satan's point men, serves wholesome food for thought,  "Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness."  Public assistance should be administered like antibiotics - for the right  condition, in the right dose, and for the right amount of time. Throwing pills,  money, or plastic at people makes us hungrier.
                
                  Dr. Mumpower is a practicing psychologist and a former U.S. congressional candidate  and Asheville City Council member. 
                Contact him at drmumpower@aol.com