People may need help, but in the end we need to do for ourselves

"Put not your trust in princes ..."
 -- PSALM 146:3

 I'm pretty certain there was a time in American history when people didn't expect -- or want -- the government to have a visible effect on their lives.

As recently as the Great Depression, when people were starving, there were actually significant numbers of people in Congress against any sort of help for them because they believed "handouts" would destroy their initiative.

Being an American, specifically being a good Protestant American, meant succeeding or failing on your own effort, with only the help of family and friends.

That was nice if your family was named Rockefeller and your friends were named Morgan, but it was still a decent ideal to strive toward.

In the Depression, Harry Hopkins had the classic line when a conservative senator spoke against New Deal relief efforts and what damage they would do to America in the long run.

"People don't eat in the long run, Senator."

None of FDR's relief efforts were designed to be permanent. In fact, it wasn't until that crazy liberal Richard Nixon that welfare programs were made permanent, and that's one of the factors some folks say helped destroy the African-American family unit.

If you look at our politics now, the wild swings back and forth where if there are no immediate fixes to our problems, we throw the bums out and start again, an awful lot of that is because people have changed the way they look at the government.

Think of the 1992 presidential debate, when Bill Clinton said, "I feel your pain." That was in response to a questioner who said people wanted the government to "take care of them."

Sensitive liberal that I am, I wanted to bitch-slap the guy.

"Take care of yourself," I shouted at the screen. "Grow a set and take care of yourself and your family."

I don't want anyone to starve. I don't want people sleeping on the streets (unless they're drunk and can't find their homes). And I certainly don't want to see children's lives ruined because they didn't have the intelligence to pick better parents.

But what do we do? I think one step in the right direction might be returning two words to our language in their traditional meanings.

Pride and shame.

I don't want to hear anymore about "jobs Americans won't do." I want people to take pride in the fact that if they had to take a crummy job to feed their family, they took that job and they did it the best they could.

I think one problem we have in this country is that even mouth-breathers who took three years to get through the fifth grade think they should have a corner office, a hot secretary and their own driver.

We used to hear about "honest labor" and about how America needs ditch diggers and janitors the same way it needs doctors and lawyers. Now we hear that ditch diggers and janitors are jobs for Mexicans.

As for shame, there are two kinds of that we've lost.

Of course there should be shame for people who are able but not willing to work who collect welfare payments, but there should be an equal sense of shame for people and businesses who treat their employees like dogs just to improve the bottom line.

Anyone who works full time and takes pride in doing a good job is worthy of our respect.

He -- or she -- is doing their job and not looking for Bill Clinton to feel their pain, for Dubya Bush to be a compassionate conservative or for Barack Obama to give them hope.

Hope, like pride or shame, should come from within.

Once we were a nation of great individuals.

We could do that again.

Put not your trust in princes.

Put it in God -- or in yourself.