Pursuing better public services and a firmer social safety net is sensible — but with important reservations.
Badly designed social programs can wreak havoc on the very lives they are meant to help. A public service can become a money-eating black hole that leaves nobody better off. For that reason, we should not reflexively endorse every government program or every welfare payment.
There is a further danger: these programs can be nothing more than bait — a package deal whose real intent is laid out like this: “We intend to dismantle your way of life because you are merely raw material for our utopian experiments. We will remake schools to stupefy rather than educate. Our ‘reforms’ will produce crime so severe you’ll be afraid to walk the streets or let your children out. Muslim colonists will become a ruling class with powers greater than any Communist party ever exercised. Activists will indoctrinate your children. We will outlaw everything that gives you joy. We will fill your days with frustration and conflict. And to keep you passive and loyal, we’ll hand out free school lunches and three extra days of vacation.”
That is how the modern left often operates — offering seductions and social experiments in a single package. The neoliberal right, by contrast, dispenses with the bait altogether.
How do you know if a policy is bait? Listen to the way its proponents talk about life, lifestyle, and national development. Even when they speak cautiously in public, their true aims eventually reveal themselves.