No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

I know—the title is a cliché as old as liberalism itself, but evidently it can’t be said enough. Anyway, we should not be surprised. We have Obamacare and Obamaphones, so we may as well have Obamameals. Actually we’ve had Obamameals for awhile now, but you may just now be hearing of them. Yesterday, the AP reported that in Boston, school children carrying lunchboxes could become “a more unusual sight as parents learn about a federal program that is now providing all public school students in the city with free breakfast and lunch.”

The AP continues, “The nation's oldest school system has joined a program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that has spread to 10 states and the District of Columbia that offers students two free meals every school day, whether or not their families can afford them.” Julia would be proud.

A column in USA Today last year noted, “Twelve million kids currently eat school breakfasts, but that number will soar. Under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) of 2010, all schools with 40% low-income students will be allowed to offer free breakfasts and lunch to all students.” As the AP also notes, the HHFKA authorized $4.5 billion in new federal spending. The program will be available across the country next (2014-2015) school year.

According to the White House, the additional funding for the Child Nutrition Program is for 10 years. Do you think it will ever end? How long before we hear that it is the “right” of every (public) school child in America to be fully fed while they attend their government schools? After all, indoctrination goes down much easier on a full stomach.

The AP reported that Efrain Toledano, principal of the Maurice J. Tobin School in Boston, said that he expects the program will cut down on potential disruptions at the K-8 school by easing hunger pangs that could be linked to classroom misbehavior. “We know that calm stomachs means calm students who are ready to learn in classrooms.”

Well now, combine the effects of a “calm stomach” with those of Ritalin and Adderall, and our government schools will soon provide a great setting for the next season of The Walking Dead. (Gives new meaning to the movement to arm teachers, huh?)

What’s more, it seems that much of the motivation behind expanding the availability of “free” meals to kids in government schools is to remove the stigma that might come from receiving a handout. Just as when food stamps were replaced with EBT cards, liberals want all of us to feel better about receiving things from “Obama’s stash.”

“Besides easing hunger,” noted the AP, “school officials said, the program helps erase a stigma that plagued some students from poor families.” Yes, because it’s all about making everyone “feel” better, no matter the cost to the country, and in spite of the fact that “the USDA found that stigma had little to do with deterring kids from accepting free [meals].”

With the amount of welfare handed out by Big Government these days, is anyone surprised that there is little “stigma” attached to receiving a government handout! When all of us are standing there holding our hands out for the next Big Government benefit, there will be absolutely no stigma! And notice the lesson the children in government schools are getting: everybody’s got to be “equal,” and it’s the job of those in power to make sure this happens. It’s little wonder that minds bent in such a way grow up and vote for Democrats.

Of course this is just more rotten fruit born of the tree of liberalism that resides in the heart of Barack’s Candy Mountains. As I alluded to above, President Obama signed HHFKA into law in December of 2010. HHFKA easily passed the Democratic led House and Senate. So again, thanks to liberals and their party, we now have yet another Big Government program that not only will never die (until the collapse of the republic, that is), but almost certainly will grow.

Democrats will trumpet it as a success, and the moment anyone tries to whittle back the program, or dare-say kill it, they will howl that only a villain would take food away from a hungry child. The media will get their marching orders from the liberals in D.C. and provide the low-information voters with just the right amount of propaganda to ensure that the seemingly perpetual cycle of Big Government rolls on.

How ironic it was that a liberal proudly told us, “the era of Big Government is over.” Instead, we now have tens-of-millions of Americans who have come to believe not only that their lunch should be “free,” but also their health care, their transportation, their education, their phones, their housing, and so on. Also, more and more parents will be conditioned to the idea that it’s the government’s responsibility to feed their children.

We recently witnessed evidence of such conditioning with the fast-food worker walkouts. Millions of young Americans (who probably got their government school meals for “free”) have been duped into believing that it is the role of Big Government to ensure that they be paid a “living wage,” no matter the level of skill and effort that their job requires. As Rush pointed out, this is about control. “The smaller people's dreams, the easier time you're gonna have controlling them. The more simple their desires, the more simple and less complex, the easier it's gonna be to control them.”

Prior to the 2012 presidential election, after Obama presented us with his “entitlement darling,” Julia, I wrote that I hoped that there were not too many like her who vote. How naïve of me. Ben Franklin warned us, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” Must it come to this before enough eyes will be opened?

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Copyright 2013, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason

Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com