The unintended, unspoken message of the Advocate editorial of June 4 has laid bare the raw fact that Louisiana is a failed state, and worse, the people remain seemingly content with it just as it is.

The editorial, titled “With too many poor people, Louisiana needs the federal government,” sang the praise of all the free money that flows from the Federal government to our state, money that keeps us afloat because we are so poor. They praised the efforts of leaders who ensure that flow, and derided those who would dare criticize that being a poster child for Federal largesse is not a metric of success.

For this editorial we should all be thankful. The Advocate presented a most powerful argument for those who question why we are proud of being a state rich in assets, but one that cannot support itself without the addiction to other peoples’ money. Instead of being as intended a great big wet kiss to the welfare state, the editorial should ignite a passion to finally reject the moral dilemma of a people so dependent upon the generosity of others.

Why are the people of our state content with living in the backwater of a booming region in one of the richest nations? I suppose that that question will result in more than one Doctoral thesis in Economic History, but it is where we are. Perhaps we were too reliant on good paying energy jobs and the promises of politicians who subsisted on promising a Chicken in Every Pot and Don’t Tax You, Don’t Tax Me, Tax the Man Behind the Tree. Perhaps our business and agrarian history is too steeped in a Louisiana form of Roman patronage, a system in which the rich and powerful take care of just enough of the needs of the lower classes in exchange for low wages and political favorability. Perhaps our culture just honors laziness, poor education, and dependency too much. Perhaps……

The reasons are many, but the dire results are obvious. As the Advocate told us, we should be happy that we survive on all that free money from Washington and the politicians who serve as our patrons. The Advocate intended for us to honor those leaders who brought us to the trough and encouraged us to drink heartily. But the Advocate missed the point.

The point of the editorial should not have been to defend big government cash handouts, not to lead us to the conclusion that poverty is our only option, it should have served as a call to arms for us to finally reject Huey Long’s populism and Democratic Socialism, a rejection of the notion that being so dependent on the public weal is a good thing. Ours is a sick political philosophy; it leads to poverty of the mind that feeds on itself and destroys what’s good in our spirit.

The editorial staff of the Advocate did a terrible dis-service to our state by indirectly justifying a system that has left us at the bottom of all states. What they should have written is about how a modern capitalist state like we could be brings with it the diminishment of the spiral of poverty and its associated social ills. It should have said yes, we need support today, but depending on it as a permanent way of life is not a good thing. We need time-limited Federal help as we break our addiction to taking handouts from others in order to move to a place in which dependency is the exception, not the rule.

Will our ship of state turn and lead us to the promises of prosperity in a booming South? That only path follows a vision to do so and the courage of a leaders to actually show the people the benefits offered and to act. If all we get from potential leaders is a bunch of status quo promises to protect what should not be protected, then the future will reflect the past. If anyone emerges with the courage say that we can’t just keep doing the same things and expecting better outcomes, then maybe, over time, we will see the folly of an editorial that glorifies dependency and ignores the rotten foundation that it has wrought.

Government dependency has robbed our people of their belief in themselves. It has resulted in generations of political leaders whose efforts have been to protect a broken system, instead of building upon our untold natural and manmade assets to mold a state in which prosperity and growth are the metrics of success. A state that contributes to the whole and a state whose major media outlet doesn’t just celebrate the amount that it is given from the whole.