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Many traditional conservatives I know and care about have a certain “tough love” worldview. They say
the best thing for society is for the individual to simply “pull himself up by his bootstraps.”

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel
jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” I see logic inherent to
Rev. King’s compassion. So, I vote for leaders who notice not everyone “has boots.”

They consider systemic patterns and understand how generational effects of inequality necessitate
social welfare programs. Educated governance supports policies that don’t simply assume everyone
has “a pair of boots” or that one person’s “boots” were as easy to acquire as the next person’s.

I’ve heard more than a few northwest Ohioans say, “Now that SNAP is at risk, maybe they’ll get a job.”
According to the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, 86% of the working poor and 45,000 veterans qualify
for SNAP. 62% are families with children. Forty-three precent are elderly or disabled people.

We’re talking about $5.64 a day for our most vulnerable people and veterans. There’s a line between
“tough love” and cruelty. Stigmatizing SNAP recipients as “lazy” is counter to fact and shiftless
morality, cruelty hiding under a veil of misinformation.

Rev. King also said, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of
destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

If compassion isn’t a worthy enough cause, there’s also the fact that $1 in SNAP benefits generates
$1.54 in economic activity. In October 2026, our state and counties will need to cover an increase of
$70 plus million due to administrative cost shifts alone from H.R. 1 (ohiofoodbanks.org). Helping “the
least of us” really does help us all both morally and economically, a truism this federal administration
doesn’t practice.

“Tough love” has crossed the line over to cruel assumptions. When northwest Ohioans are lined up at
food banks, we might at least assume they are mothers, fathers, disabled, elderly, or veterans. We
might at least assume they’re the working poor on a lunchless lunch break.

What do we have to lose to provide our neighbors with proverbial boots in the form of $5.64 a day to
eat? At the very least, we will have lost a cruel community.

Katie Frey
rural Napoleon