Hunger

I am a fat guy. Have been a fat guy on and off for years now. Currently working to eat right and exercise and drop some pounds. Having some success. I don't really understand hunger. I know what it is to be hungry in that I have had my stomach growl in the hours between meals. But I have had much more concern with what my next meal would be than whether or not I would have my next meal.

Even when I was young and my parents had very little money with three children, I never missed a meal. I never even felt the stress my parents felt in finding ways to feed us. I came to the table, sat down at my spot and maybe even complained because the meal was not from McDonald's. But there was always food on my plate. I never had to miss a meal because there was no food in the house.

The idea of hungry people here in America has always been so strange to me. At a young age, I understood that we were indeed a land of plenty. You can just walk down the aisle of any grocery store in this country and see that we have plenty. In the years since I was a child the offerings at the local grocery store have expanded to include exotic gourmet items that were never seen in my small town world except on television.

My wife and I seek out new restaurants to try dishes and delicacies that we have never had before. There are TWO whole television networks focused on food as art and entertainment. There are countless shows on other networks that also feature food and chefs. There are all sorts of festivals and competitions that showcase the acumen of professional and amateur cooks alike. This is a land of plenty.

And yet there are people who are hungry. I am not a bleeding heart. Far from it. I am politically just to the right of Attila the Hun. And that is still just to the left of my dad. My dad was conservative and tended to vote Republican with a layering of Libertarianism ladled on to maintain succulence. I, like my father, believe that you deserve in this world only those things that you can work for and earn.

People lament that the rich have a better life with the best of everything. They have the best food and the best wine, the prettiest spouses, the fastest cars, the biggest houses, and the best medical care. How unfair that those of us less well off have to settle for less. The argument is that the rich don't deserve all of this just because they have more money.

I think they do. If you have worked hard enough and long enough and well enough at a line of work that garners riches, you are entitled to all that they can provide. That means they DESERVE the best food and wine and spouses and cars and houses and even medical care. I honestly believe this even though I am squarely in the middle of the middle class.

I fundamentally oppose any and all government programs that offer a hand out to people who have failed at life. I know that calling people failures is probably horrific to most of you. But if you are in a place where you cannot feed and house yourself and your family, then you are a failure in life. Choosing any other way to describe it is just sugar coating a situation that does nothing to make a situation better.

But I have the same weakness that my father had. I am content in sentencing adults to live with the consequences of their choices in life with no help from the government ( I do endorse charitable organizations that help the poor - they are able to set boundaries on the help they offer). But I have a weakness for children. Children have played no part in the failings of their parents. It is unfair in the extreme to have children bear the burden of the failures of their parents.

Any limits you set on hand outs would impact the children of the parents. It would impact the innocent. And people like me are not the only ones who know of this loop hole. My mom once had a woman on welfare explain to her that she was going to have to have another child soon. Her youngest was about to start school and this would result in a reduction in her benefits since she would be able to go out and get a job while the child was in school. This woman had done the math and realized that if she had her fifth child within the next 10 months or so, she could continue to not work.

How do you deal with that and not punish her five kids who have done nothing wrong but be born to a waste of life? I think I would be more comfortable with government assistance to people if you could put strict limits on what they were able to do with the funds.

I worked in a convenience store as a teenager and got to read the directions for handling the food stamps program. Part of the structure was that we were to offer no guidance to anyone using the stamps for purchases, such as pointing out that hamburger is cheaper than steak. Again, part of the reason that I like private institutions that address hunger and homelessness is that they can impose restrictions on their help in a way the government feels that it cannot. If you are drunk out of your gourd, then you do not get to sleep in the church shelter kind of thing.

There is an idea that poor folks should have the same rights as everyone else when it comes to their assistance from the government. Again, I disagree. If you cannot pay own way, you have to play by a special set of rules that the rest of us don't. I think you ought to have to have regular drug testing to receive benefits since you might not need benefits if you were not spending your cash on drugs. I think you should have to spend a portion of each day doing something in the service of the state - even if it is something done from home to avoid child care expenses.

But even here, we are faced with what to do if a person violates any of the proscriptions applied to them since if you cut them off, their kids are cut off. That is a horrible side effect. I know people who grew up hungry as a direct result of the dereliction of their parents.

I have had long conversations with friends who hated summer vacation. When they were in school they were assured of at least one meal each day. During the summer there were literally days where they did not eat at all. The family was not on any sort of assistance since both parents worked and produced plenty of money. The money just went to drugs instead of things like food for the kids or the electric bill or rent. I have no personal experience with that kind of horror.

There is no solution I can see to that kind of situation. Nobody knew (at least no one willing to take action) what was going on. And there are no means of addressing this kind of abuse unless someone says something. The kids just go hungry.

But one radical idea (that I struggle with) keeps coming back to me when dealing with those who would have the rest of us subsidize them. I admit that this idea makes me terribly uncomfortable, but as times get tougher and tougher, it begins to seem more and more plausible. If you accept assistance from the rest of us, you must submit mandatory birth control.

I know, I know. Terribly invasive, but only if you ask us to come into your life financially. The logic would be that, if you cannot provide for your family now, why should you allow your family to get any larger? I can hear people now talking about the infringement on rights and how rich people don't have to face this kind of thing. Agreed, but rich people are not asking me for money.

And it addresses the issue of being able to turn off benefits that would hurt children. If people are kept from re-populating the needy, eventually we would have some families off the welfare rolls in direct opposition to the woman in my mom's story. I know. I am a horrible person for wanting to do this to poor disenfranchised people. I know.

But in a land of plenty we need to come up with some ideas that will allow us to help those who need the help without continuing the culture of dependence that sees generations of a family dependent on the government. We have to help and we have to help on a grand scale. But we have to curtail this idea that help comes with no strings attached.

The rest of us are only allowed to live the kind of life we can afford. The poorest of us that need our help should have to live a life that matches what they can afford. That means limits and conditions placed on them from the ones that provide the money. Just like you and I abide by the rules of our employers. If we could set parameters on how help was given, there would be more "help" available to be given. How much more legitimately needy people could be helped within our flawed government system if we did this?

Much of this whole argument would be alleviated if each of us did more to help our fellow man. Take some time (and money) this year to help others. Find a charitable organization, research it, and if it actually helps people, then find ways to support it. Take your nose out of your own problems for a while and if you have lived my life, discover that there are others out there that have had a much, much tougher time than you have. Enjoy your life and the rewards you have earned but leave a spot in your budget to help those who are less fortunate that you are. If we all did this to the extent that we are capable, this issue would shrink considerably.

And keep an eye out for kids who play with your kids and go to school with your kids who go to sleep hungry tonight. They are out there and they are probably silent about it. Help them too. If you have kids and you have a problem with drugs and alcohol, find a program, find help. No matter what demons are chasing you, don't let them have your kids.

There are people hungry in this land of plenty. Children in America go to sleep having not eaten all day and with the assurance that they will not eat in the morning either. That is horrible and shameful. I think we conservatives have to commit to do more. I think the liberals of our country have to admit that benefits with no strings only serves to create a culture of dependence. This problem is fixable, but we all have to do our part. If we don't, if we continue to fail to deal with this, then we condemn children to continue to face an all consuming hunger.