I have been reading Theodore Dalrymple’s volume of essays entitled, OUR CULTURE, WHAT’S LEFT OF IT. A British psychiatrist and commentator Dalrymple has practiced medicine on four continents, a British inner-city hospital and a prison. In his chapter How To Read A Society he quotes Alexis de Tocqueville, who is best known for his Democracy in America, published in 1835. Also published in that year was his Memoir on Pauperism which was unknown to me. Dalrymple comments:

He had visited England, then by far the most prosperous country in Europe, if not the world. But there was a seeming paradox: a sixth of the population of England were – or had made themselves – paupers, completely reliant upon handouts from public charity….In the midst of what was then the utmost prosperity, Tocqueville found not only physical squalor but moral and emotional degradation. Tocqueville surmised that the reason lay in the fact that England was then the one country in Europe that provided public assistance, as of right, to people who lacked the means to support themselves….

At first sight, remarked Tocqueville, the replacement of discretionary charity by public assistance granted as of right appeared deeply humane. What, he asked, could be nobler than the determination to ensure that no one went hungry? What could be more fair and reasonable than that the prosperous should give up a little for the welfare of those with nothing?

If men were not thinking beings who react to their circumstances by taking what they conceive to be of advantage to them, this system doubtless would have had the desired effect. But instead, Tocqueville observed the voluntary idleness to which the seemingly humane system of entitlement gave rise – how it destroyed both kindness and gratitude (for what is given bureaucratically is received with resentment), how it encouraged fraud and dissimulation of various kinds, and above all how it dissolved the social bonds that protected people from the worst effects of poverty. The provision of relief by entitlement atomized society: Tocqueville cited the case of a man who, though financially able to do so, refused to support his daughter-in-law and grandchild after his son’s death, precisely because public support was available to them as of right. Having paid his taxes, why should he do more? The provision of charity as of right destroyed the motive for human solidarity in the face of hardship, and undermined both ties of personal affection and the sense of duty toward close relations. Intended as an expression of social responsibility, it liberated selfishness. As Tocqueville grasped, the shift of responsibility from individual to collectivity had an enormous and deleterious effect on how people thought and felt, and therefore upon society as a whole. Where this shift had taken place, economic progress was perfectly compatible with squalor of every kind, and general wealth with degradation.

It wasn’t until the end of the twentieth century, with its unprecedented prosperity and its militant moral relativism, that Tocqueville’s prescience became clear…none of the social pathology of a modern British or American slum would have surprised Tocqueville, who foresaw it all many years ago. (p.178f.)

In other words, the government has replaced the family often because the family has been undermined by the changing culture and the erosion of morals. Can this be changed? Can the family be strengthened and supported again by the cultural elite? Can we make the family great again? What will it take? Read 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13.