Obama Democrats’ troubling view on work

Among its many stamps, the Postal Service has a series called “Made in America, Building a Nation.” The strip of “forever” stamps is a collection of iconic photographs of 20th-century industry featuring men and women toiling on railroads, skyscrapers and factory floors.

A celebration of work and workers, the series quotes Helen Keller saying, “The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”

My, oh, my, how times have changed. America now has a government that views work as a trap and celebrates those who escape it.

People who are not dependent of government hand-outs are harder to control.

All true and yet, as Carney’s defense showed, something much, much larger is at play. The impacts are symptoms. The disease is that leading Democrats view fewer workers and more dependency as a good thing. That attitude largely explains slow economic growth, record-low labor rates and the explosion of handouts over the last five years.

This anti-job, pro-dependency tilt is the crux of the nation’s polarization. In essence, it pits those who believe in the sanctity of work against those who believe in penalizing wealth and redistributing its fruits.

Not all Democrats agree with that approach, but the party is now controlled by those who do. It is the party that celebrates subsidies and rewards states for getting more people on food stamps. It opens the door wider for disability payments and fights for unemployment benefits like it once fought for jobs. It does these things not because of an emergency but because of a warped ideology.