Thomas G West

Both conservatives and liberals often misunderstand the American Founders' approach to poverty and welfare. Conservatives tend to assume that poor relief in early America was entirely private, while liberals generally think the poor were entirely neglected until the 20th century. But America has always had laws providing for the poor. The real difference between the Founders' welfare policies and today's is over how, not whether, government should help those who are in need. The question was and remains: What policies help the poor, and what policies harm them? The ultimate goal for the Founders was lifting the poor out of poverty as quickly as possible and preventing permanent dependence.

This publication explains the principles of the American founding. It shows how those principles gave rise to constitutional government and a free society, and how freedom was extended to all Americans after the Civil War. It will also show how the Founders' principles were opposed by a new theory that arose in the Progressive Era; how that new theory finally came to dominate American politics in the 1960s; and how that theory has changed our government and our society, and threatens our liberty.

West writes that the victory of relativism has made the Founders' understanding of religious liberty alien to us. Liberty today is taken to mean "the right to choose," the right to do whatever one pleases. Since we no longer distinguish between liberty and license, we no longer understand the Founders' conception of religious liberty. For them, the freedom to follow one's religion should be protected, in Washington's words, as an "inherent natural right." No one may be harmed or punished for his mode of worship. But religious liberty is not religious license.