Here's a little tough love for you.

If you're in college, you shouldn't be on welfare.

That includes food stamps, SSI, Section 8, CHIP, WIC, Medicaid or any other of the countless something-for-nothing welfare programs our socialist government wants to crank out.

If you're in college, it is shameful, dishonorable and immoral to be on welfare.

And, yes, I'm talking to you -- and I'm talking about you. If you can physically and mentally handle college, you can physically and mentally handle a job. And if you can physically and mentally handle a job, then it is a disgraceful thing to be on welfare.

Period.

We used to know that in this country. But unfortunately, we've forgotten it. Worse, we've so sown the seeds of welfare dependence in our society so deeply and broadly that a large percentage of American college students are also welfare recipients.

For shame.

It is just incomprehensible that so many people would have so little self-respect. Instead of being embarrassed to suck at the government teet, people almost proudly declare it, the arrogance of entitlement worn like a chip on the shoulder, almost as a sign of importance.

It's too bad so many of these young people were raised so poorly. And, yes, if you take welfare and are of sound mind and body then, sad to say, you were raised poorly.

Here's the straight scoop. You have the responsibility to provide for you. You have the obligation to earn you own food, pay your own rent, buy your own gas, get your own clothes, cover your own medical care. You are the boss of you. You are completely free, but with freedom comes responsibility, and the first responsibility of life is to provide for yourself.

Unless you are physically handicapped or ill, or mentally impaired or ill, you have that responsibility. Unless you are incompetent to provide for yourself, by virtue of handicap or disability, you have an obligation to do so.

And if you're in college -- getting from class to class and doing the studying necessary -- then you are capable of work.

But, you say, by getting an education I will prepare myself to work later, so if I take a little help from the government now, there's nothing wrong with that. Many people say that, and they're all wrong. Just like the people who say that by getting an education -- while getting welfare -- they are preparing themselves to be high-wage earners which will allow them to pay more taxes in the future and "pay back" the money they take as welfare recipients.

The problem with both those arguments is that they ignore the responsibility of self-sufficiency. God told Adam that by the sweat of his brow he would eat his bread. That same principle applies today, even if you're in college. Higher education is not extended childhood, where mommy-and-daddy government has to provide for your needs.

Further, the traits established at the beginning of life have a habit of lingering for the balance of life. If failing to provide for yourself becomes easy when you're 20, it will still be appealing when you're 30 or 50. If you don't learn in the very first years of adulthood how to struggle and scrape and scrimp, and take as a matter of self-esteem the responsibility to provide for yourself, you may never learn it.

Put another way, if you are on welfare during college, you might not be getting all the education you need.

Some say that they only use welfare for health coverage, or to pay for their children's needs, but those excuses are still invalid. If you have children -- even if your husband ran out on you or you never had a husband -- it is your responsibility to provide for them. You would be better off morally working two jobs to provide for your family than going to college and being on welfare. Besides, what sort of horrible legacy for your children would it be to see their mom or dad accepting welfare? What sort of terrible example would that be?

If you are going to college, you don't take welfare. You work, if you have to, and you work a lot, if you have to. If you have to take a semester off or a year off or more to work and save, then you do it. If you have to go to ROTC, you do it. If you have to enlist in the Armed Forces, you do it. If you have to get involved with some sort of business or branch of government that will pay you to learn a specific skill, you do it.

You get resourceful and you get busy, and most importantly -- you get to work.

A college education is not a right. You are not entitled to it. Free room and board ended when you left mom and dad's house, free school ended when you got your high school diploma. You are a grown up now, and you have to pay your own way.

Don't touch welfare now and do everything you can never to touch it for the rest of your life. It will be harder that way, but better.

And you will be better, too. You will set a good example for yourself and for you family. What you have will truly be yours, and the most important thing you will have is self-respect and pride. The government will go out of its way to sign you up for some welfare program or another, but you must resist at all costs. You must not let it put its hooks in you.

You must stand on your own two feet. You must provide for yourself.

In college, and for the rest of your life.