BASTIAT, M. FREDERIC, Sophisms of Protection (Second Series), Natural History of Spoliation

Another hindrance [to justice] arises out of the very virtues of pity and sympathy. These impel many to endeavor, not to persuade, but to compel the more efficient and prudent who have by their farsightedness, courage, industry and thrift made good provision for themselves and their offspring, to provide also for the inefficient and the improvident. To be asked to give to these does not offend any sense of right, but if one be told he must give he feels resentful at once. He feels he has a right to decide for himself...Society did not come into existence nor does it now exist to correct the inequalities of nature, the inequalities of natural powers, nor to prevent the efficient and prudent receiving and enjoying the results of their efficiency and prudence. Nature itself makes no such effort. It rather tends to eliminate the less efficient...We must expect nature to deal with society, with states and nations, as it does with individuals. If a state by its laws discourages the exercise to its full extent of the efficiency of the few and renders less severe the penalties for the inefficiency and imprudence of the many, it cannot long maintain any advantageous position among other nations. Whatever the precepts of religion, of philanthropy, or of other virtues may require, the precepts of justice do not require society to support men in idleness nor even to furnish them with employment. Neither do the precepts of justice require the state to furnish opportunities, nor even to establish equality of opportunity, but only equality of right to take advantage of opportunity.

EMERY, LUCILIUS A., Concerning Justice, Chapter IV, Justice the Equilibrium

Since 1965 we have spent $5 trillion on the War on Poverty, measured in 1992 constant dollars. Yet the poverty rate is higher today than it was the year the War on Poverty began.

[M]ost of the money we spend doesn't go to poor people. It goes to nonpoor people who work in the welfare-poverty industry.

[I]f we undermine the stimulants to individual effort which come alone from the spirit of Liberty, we may well cease to discuss the greater "diffusion of income," "of wealth," "minimum standards," and "economic security," the "abolition of poverty," and its fears. Those are possibilities only in an economy of plenty.

They proclaim that every man is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his "minimum sustenance"—his food, his clothes, his shelter—with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright. To receive it—from whom?

Nannyism is fascism with training wheels.