Change: A Poor America on Socialism

Moving back to Uncle Sam's plantation by Star Parker

• Six years ago, I wrote a book called "Uncle Sam's Plantation." I wrote the book to tell my own story of what I saw living inside the welfare state and my own transformation out of it.
  
  I said in that book that indeed there are two Americas. A poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism.
  
  
• A vast sea of perhaps well-intentioned government programs, all initially set into motion in the 1960s, that were going to lift the nation's poor out of poverty.
  
  A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation. Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from "How do I take care of myself?" to "What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?"
  
  Instead of solving economic problems, government welfare socialism created monstrous moral and spiritual problems – the kind of problems that are inevitable when individuals turn responsibility for their lives over to others.
  
  The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city schools and broken black families.
  
  Through God's grace, I found my way out. It was then that I understood what freedom meant and how great this country is.
  
  
• I thought we were on the road to moving socialism out of our poor black communities and replacing it with wealth-producing American capitalism.
  
  But, incredibly, we are going in the opposite direction.
  
  Instead of poor America on socialism becoming more like rich American on capitalism, rich America on capitalism is becoming like poor America on socialism.
  
  Uncle Sam has welcomed our banks onto the plantation and they have said, "Thank you, Suh."
  
  Now, instead of thinking about what creative things need to be done to serve customers, they are thinking about what they have to tell Massah in order to get their cash.
  
  There is some kind of irony that this is all happening under our first black president on the 200th anniversary of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.
  
  Worse, socialism seems to be the element of our new young president. And maybe even more troubling, our corporate executives seem happy to move onto the plantation.