“Welfare” and “entitlements.” These words are examples of the power of propaganda over reason.
For people who didn’t learn what a dictionary is: ‘Welfare’ means the health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group. Putting it in the US Constitution’s first sentence was a way of providing a clue as to the point of the country they had founded. (The first three words being HUGE was another.) The POINT of the Constitution was to form a self-government that took care of the public (and protected the public from the rich and powerful.)
‘Entitlement’ literally means things We the People of the United States are entitled to from our shared prosperity – the fruits of self-government that protects the people from having their wealth drained by the rich and powerful.
How could ‘welfare’ and ‘entitlements’ have come to be applied negatively? You’re supposed to be ashamed if you – and look down on people who – benefit from the fruits of democracy? Decades of well-crafted “Conservative movement” anti-government, anti-democracy propaganda reversed people’s understanding that the POINT of the founding of the United States was to STOP the world’s long history of systematic oppression of regular people by those who would seize control of the systems of power for their own benefit.
Words from one of the better summaries of the POINT:
“… a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
And another: