Re: Oh, yes, I'm a homophobe. And a statist.

And self-reliance doesn't have to be absolute? Oh, good. Then you support the pooling of resources and the provision of a social safety net from the more to the less fortunate (socialism). And no, that doesn't require a state.

Actually, the pooling of resources and the provision of a social safety net from the more to the less fortunate is a staple of American society, especially in the southern and western states, and especially among rural populations. Anyone who has actually seen how such communities work is quite aware of this. And you are right that it doesn't require a state - in fact, state involvement was traditionally unwelcome - and is still unwelcome to many.

Of course, there were some caveats: this social safety net was based on kinship and friendship and relied on voluntary actions taken by individuals and private groups, and such private groups ranged from secular societies to (most commonly) churches, and could be local, regional, or even international in scope. The local nature also made it difficult for obvious cheats to milk the system for long. One real downside was that unpopular persons were sometimes excluded, even if the reason for their unpopularity was not their own fault - but even this was not necessarily a great problem in areas of larger population where there were more layers of overlapping services.

Of course, some people slipped through the cracks in this system, just as some people fall through the cracks of the government system, but with multiple overlapping safety nets most people got what they needed.

One of the great features of the private system was that it kept the dependency relationship personal - which naturally motivated people to do what they could to provide for themselves and minimize expenses, without imposing a burden on their friends and relatives if they could help it. At the other end of the scale, I recently heard a program on the radio in which a person was talking about how "food stamp"* participants need not feel ashamed about using food stamps, because the government has set aside large amounts of funds for food stamps and not all of it is being used. One caller said she didn't understand why some people in line at the grocery store gave her dirty looks when she bought healthful fresh produce with her food stamps. (I know the reason: because those people are required to pay for fresh produce for her, when they cannot afford the same for their own families.)

* "Food stamps" is the common name for a U.S. government program that provides funds for qualifying persons to buy food.

This government system, which inculcates a sense of entitlement among healthy persons of working age, has led to a culture of arrogant dependency - a sort of mirror-image to the system of slavery once in place - in which anyone who tries to do right and provide for their families has a portion of their income taken from them for the support of the two parasitic classes - the government poor and the government rich. It is, paradoxically, largely a product of the more socially individualistic northeastern states, where ties of family and community are weaker.

Just as the slaveholders of the past arrogantly assumed a right to the labor of those they held in bondage, these parasitic classes today assume a right to the labor of anyone who works for a living - and as with the slaveholders, they use the government to enforce theft from the productive classes - though on a scale that the slaveholders never dreamt of.