Review: Uncle Sam’s Plantation by Star Parker

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Star Parker’s book Uncle Sam’s Plantation:  How Big Government Enslaves America’s Poor and What We Can Do About It, has been revised and updated. 

My main response after reading it is, “Wow!”  This powerful book explains so many things I’ve thought about:  the different kinds of poverty; the effects of welfare on poor people; how family breakdown is a direct result of welfare programs and how it causes poverty; how the education system contributes to the problem rather than solving it; how tax schemes aimed at helping the poor reduce their opportunities; and how big government is part of the problem, not the solution. 

Uncle Sam’s Plantation is not a ‘nice’ book.  It doesn’t gloss over the realities of many poor people’s lives.  Instead, it shows how some of their endless difficulties are a result of government policies, ostensibly created to help the poor, that instead enslave them as effectively as plantation owners did in the past. 

The author, who made her way out of the slavery-inducing entitlement mindset and lifestyle when she became a Christian, applies her thoughts mainly to the poor.   However, this mindset is slipping into mainstream thought throughout the western world.  We, too, can be gradually lured onto a ‘government plantation’, rather than relying on God and living according to His will.

This is not a practical book as in: do this, and then that, and then that.  Rather, it encourages and empowers by pointing out issues we may not have realized and by showing that Christianity and Christian values, not guilt-induced big government ‘compassion,’ is the solution.

I highly recommend Uncle Sam’s Plantation.  It is among the most important books I’ve read in the last few years.

Disclosure:  As a BookSneeze reviewer, I received Uncle Sam’s Plantation for free from Thomas Nelson in exchange for my honest opinions.