Patrick Underhill 🌲

Christian | paleoconservative | your great-grandfather's moderate

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

Charlie Kirk trusted in Christ as Lord and Savior.

Be like Charlie.

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

@HenrySibley1858 @grok What percentage of current recipients of federal childcare subsidies are single parents?

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

@Bobbythirdway I understand your perspective. I am not a blindly pro-GOP person, for example I would not vote for Vivek if I was in Ohio. As for the GOP, I do think it is possible to reform it to acknowledge and address these problems, or at least I can't think of a better political option.

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

Patriots.

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

@Bobbythirdway We absolutely have major systemic problems, all of which long predated Trump, but I don't think there's any reason to believe this wouldn't have happened, or been even worse, under Democrats. A lot of it was due to ridiculous healthcare spending.

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

@Bobbythirdway It's a Boomer moment for sure. They love their girlbosses. I still think that the situation is at least slightly better than it was two years ago. For example the overall number was a net of about +1M jobs for native born men and -1M for foreign born men.

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

@HenrySibley1858 Imagine if Caesar had told his soldiers "no, I'm not giving you land, that would be SOCIALISM."

[Sibley @HenrySibley1858]

Eliminating these welfare programs in Our Democracy is impossible.
Editing existing programs to pay good people instead of (or even just in addition to) useless leeches is possible.
Keep your small gov. fantasy. I'll take the $9k for my hardworking wife, thanks.

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

@Viiiiilv6674 Why?

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

"Government should use public power to shape society toward a substantive vision of the good, rather than merely protecting rights, enforcing contracts, maintaining order, and leaving citizens broad room to choose among lawful ways of life.

Couldn't have said it better myself👍🏼

[Insurrection Barbie @DefiyantlyFree]

Current program: a parent needs to earn an income, but child care is so expensive that working may be impossible without assistance. The government subsidizes that child-care expense so the parent can work and move toward economic self-sufficiency.

Expansion: instead of only subsidizing child care when it is necessary for a parent to work, study, or train, the government would also subsidize certain married households in which one parent chooses to remain home and care for the children.

I stay at home with my children. I know the value in that. It’s enormous. It’s the biggest blessing ever. I talk about how important it is everyday. You will never hear me disagree with the premise that staying at home and raising your children because you are supposed to Shepherd them and teach them and form them is priceless.

However, my husband works very hard to make that happen. And I am grateful for that literally every single day.

The government shouldn’t subsidize this. They shouldn’t subsidize anything.

Help should be limited and conditioned. Governments don’t lift people out of poverty. People lift themselves out of poverty. Sometimes they need an assist, but in a perfect world that assist would come from their communities and their churches.

And yes, it is an expansion of the welfare state. The income test may remain, but a new class of households and a new type of activity is now eligible for benefits.

It is also important that the proposal, as reported, applies specifically to married households. An unmarried couple with the same children, the same household income, and the same arrangement of one parent working while the other stays home would not receive the same treatment.

That is the postliberal position. Government should use public power to shape society toward a substantive vision of the good, rather than merely protecting rights, enforcing contracts, maintaining order, and leaving citizens broad room to choose among lawful ways of life.

This is the same governing philosophy the left has used for years. The only thing that changes is the preferred “good.” The left uses government power to subsidize and incentivize the social outcomes it wants. Postliberals object to those outcomes, then use the exact same machinery to subsidize and incentivize their own.

I reject using the government to socially engineer society.

Even when the result is one I agree with and think is extremely valuable.

And from a Christian perspective, Christ did not assign the government the role of making people virtuous. He assigned the Church the task of making disciples, and the Holy Spirit the work of transforming individual hearts.

Civil government has a legitimate role in restraining wrongdoing and protecting people from harm. But using state power to manufacture the “right” family, the “right” morality, or the “right” social order confuses the jurisdiction of Caesar with the mission Christ gave His Church.

And this is the beginning of a slippery slope.

You can say I’m overreacting but two years of studying the postliberal, integralist, post right movement has me seeing this exactly for what it is.

I could be wrong. But I don’t think I am. I would actually love to be wrong here.

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

@fi_virginia2 @grok Who introduced a bill in the Senate in 2024 to do exactly what the Trump administration plans to do related to redirecting childcare subsidies?

[Michael Knowles @michaeljknowles]

If I understand the establishment conservatives correctly, we should not reform a 30-year-old entitlement program to stop incentivizing single parenthood because it would be better abolish the entire 91-year-old welfare state, which no one even pretends to think is possible.

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

@CrankyHankJ @megbasham State power is not analogous to Tolkien's Ring of Power because state power is intrinsically good while being susceptible to abuse, whereas the ring was intrinsically evil and could not be used for good.

[Fugitive Caesar @ThomBrady5]

Horrific stuff

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

@michaeljknowles When pressed, they will admit they support the current policy of subsidizing day cares and working women and not homemakers. Because they are liberals. https://t.co/LG0jDPm2Ly

[Insurrection Barbie @DefiyantlyFree]

The current model isn’t subsidizing lifestyle choices. It’s providing assistance to people who need to enter the workforce but can’t because of the cost of daycare.

Rerouting those funds to give them to families who chose to have the mother stay home is social engineering.

And it’s expanding the welfare state by adding a new qualifying class without attaching a work requirement.

I don’t like the welfare state. I especially don’t like handing out money without work requirements attached.

If the left did this and chose to expand the benefits and give them to a new qualifying class without conditioning it on work requirements, I would be pissed off.

Mothers should be able to stay at home. Government shouldn’t be subsidizing it.

[Senator Eric Schmitt @SenEricSchmitt]

And no, economic growth is not the highest good.

A country can have rising GDP while young people cannot afford homes, delay marriage, have fewer children than they want, and spend less time with their families.

Those numbers would look good.

The society would not.

[Chandler Haynes @ChandlerHaynes6]

We don't want to save democracy. We want to save America.

[🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 @mrddmia]

Dear Republicans:

Friendly reminder, the tech bros peddling AI are not our allies.

They are using us.

[Josh Wood @J_K_Wood]

This discussion has highlighted how few people knew about the scale of tax-payer funded childcare that was already happening.

From Claude:

[Fugitive Caesar @ThomBrady5]

I wish Charlie Kirk was alive and he could call up the White House and explain why this is a problem that 98% of jobs are going to women.

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

@DefiyantlyFree Why is the status quo not also "social engineering" and "subsidizing lifestyle choices?"

Women entering the workforce is not also a "lifestyle choice?"

You're just a liberal feminist. Be honest about it.

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

@oofinator_the @OneATwoA That was part of it. Subsidized daycare was another policy they implemented.

[Patrick Underhill 🌲 @PineTreePatrick]

Hungary's family subsidies didn't substantially increase births because they didn't get women out of the workforce or increase the economic opportunities of men, which is the only proven way to significantly raise the birth rate. This trend must be reversed: