Brave Welfare Reform, Identity Politics, and an Appeal to Immigrants

The Weekend Muse | Brooke Medina

Why We Must Be Bold on Welfare Reform by Kay Coles James

How has Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty played out for poor and minority Americans? According to Heritage president Kay Coles James, not well at all. “Being black and the daughter of a former welfare recipient, I know firsthand the unintended harm welfare has caused,” she writes. James goes on to say that blacks are not the only demographic that has been hurt by welfare’s unintended consequences, emphasizing the problem isn’t one of people, but rather one of policy. She wisely calls for us to confront poverty with policies that empower Americans to thrive, rather than simply enable them to survive.

Collectivism’s Progress: From Marxism to Race and Gender Warfare by Richard Ebeling

A new coat of paint doesn’t make for a new barn nor does a newly designed, post-modern propaganda strategy make for a new ideology. Ebeling makes it abundantly clear that Marxism has not left us. Rather, it has reinvented itself in an attempt to exert its supposed relevance to a new generation through the means of identity politics. The bourgeoisie is no longer just a wealthy elite. Instead, the new 21st-century bourgeoisie can be anyone, depending on where they fall on the confusing, ever sliding, intersectionality scale. So, how do we answer collectivism’s attempts to pit Americans against one another in the oppressed versus oppressor narrative constantly being thrown at us? The author believes the answer is to re-emphasize the importance of individualism. By giving people the freedom to rise (or fall) on their merits rather than the color of their skin or chromosomes, is vital to our nation’s genetic makeup and necessary if we are going to continue to foster ingenuity and national unity.

Immigrants! Don’t Vote for What You Fled by Gloria Alvarez and PragerU

A misguided perception among a number of immigrants from Central and South America is that progressive policies in the United States are somehow going to play out better than they have in the countries they and their children have fled. My husband, the son of a South American immigrant has been afforded far better opportunities in the United States than he could have ever possessed in his father’s native country. My Venezuelan friends have known all too well the pain of leaving their loved ones and homeland because of their government’s failed socialist policies.

Unfortunately, the common narrative is that conservatives are anti-immigrant (repeat a lie often enough and people start to believe it, right?), which creates further hurdles to reaching the millions of Hispanic voters. So, as compassionate conservatives, we should make it our business to dispel the lies. We can do this by befriending immigrants, involving them in economic and social policy discussions, and advocating for common sense immigration legislation.