good intention + false assumption = bad outcome

When Michelle had her C-section, she was counseled as all other women recovering from this procedure are to get walking around as soon as possible to ensure the quickest healing and the best possible outcome. Now someone with no medical background and no previous experience with c-section, or even general delivery may question the wisdom of having the patient get up and move around. One might think: "large, deep slice in abdomen, painful when moving = good to stay still". While it's true that a period of rest is needed immediately after the procedure, persistent rest and immobility while tempting in it's avoidance of pain, would put the woman on a much slower, more complicated recovery path. If one has good intentions (wants Mom to be comfortable and heal), but a wrong or false assumption (rest is always best, or if it hurts to move it must mean it's not good to do so), this can lead to a much worse outcome, including a slower, more complicted recovery. Or take a kid who watches Mom give a sick little brother some medicine. Hmmm, he thinks, if one spoonful will help him get better in a few days, maybe the whole bottle will make him better right now!!! If you're logic and assumptions are flawed, even the best of intentions can lead to disaster. I have said this before, but it's certainly worth repeating: this is the essence of the entire liberal agenda. In almost every case, their programs/ideas do far more harm than good, but continue to pervade because they make sense at first glance, and are well intentioned.
The complete list is exhaustive, but right off the top of my head let's go with "building nuclear power plants and drilling for domestic oil is bad" and "destroying the 2nd ammendment" aka, "gun control" will make us safer. Bad, bad ideas, but they pervade without a foudation of logic and facts to support them. But probably the prime example of them all is the liberal love affair with welfare. Liberals erroneously assume that giving handouts to those in poverty (and in many cases not so impoverished) will help them rise out of it. Not only does welfare not help, it destroys people, neighborhoods, and communities. Back when I didn't know (or care) a thing about politics and policies, I spent several months in the inner city of Milwaukee. It didn't take long to realize something was VERY wrong, and politicians assumptions that they were helping these people was not only foolish, it was dangerous. My personal observations didn't end there. Being here in Guam, an island rampant in welfare, has only added to the overwhelming evidence that welfare destroys people. But enough from me. Far more intelligent people have spoken on the subject:
First, a quote from Benjamin Franklin. Spoken so long ago, but as relevant as today's headlines:

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."
Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766

Second, a Reader’s Digest article from many years ago followed by analysis by Marion G Romney. It reads:
“In our friendly neighbor city of St. Augustine great flocks of sea gulls are starving amid plenty. Fishing is still good, but the gulls don’t know how to fish. For generations they have depended on the shrimp fleet to toss them scraps from the nets. Now the fleet has moved. …
“The shrimpers had created a Welfare State for the … sea gulls. The big birds never bothered to learn how to fish for themselves and they never taught their children to fish. Instead they led their little ones to the shrimp nets.
“Now the sea gulls, the fine free birds that almost symbolize liberty itself, are starving to death because they gave in to the ‘something for nothing’ lure! They sacrificed their independence for a handout.
“A lot of people are like that, too. They see nothing wrong in picking delectable scraps from the tax nets of the U.S. Government’s ‘shrimp fleet.’ But what will happen when the Government runs out of goods? What about our children of generations to come?
“Let’s not be gullible gulls. We … must preserve our talents of self-sufficiency, our genius for creating things for ourselves, our sense of thrift and our true love of independence.”2
The practice of coveting and receiving unearned benefits has now become so fixed in our society that even men of wealth, possessing the means to produce more wealth, are expecting the government to guarantee them a profit. Elections often turn on what the candidates promise to do for voters from government funds. This practice, if universally accepted and implemented in any society, will make slaves of its citizens. -Excerpt from March 2009 Ensign.

Need further evidence? Look across the country. Communities targeted by liberals and their war on poverty who have received heavy doses of welfare year after year are almost universally worse off as measured by a variety of economic indicators. Conservatives fierce opposition to welfare isn't because we love to see the poor suffer, it's because we understand that when you give someone a handout, you're actually robbing them of something far more valuable than food stamps. Chris Gardner, the man played by Will Smith in the movie Pursuit of Happiness, recently explained (paraphrasing) that if he'd been given handouts during his darkest times, he would never have pulled himself up by the bootstraps and enjoyed the experience of truly becoming a successful person. And by successful he didn't just mean financially.

I think welfare persists because of the myth that we still live in Robin Hood times. That the system is rigged for the rich in this country and there are families that have money and families that don't. The facts however, completely refute that. First off, intra-familial income disparities almost perfectly mirror income disparities nationwide. Look at any family where the children are now bread winning adults and you will see stark differences in income. They started off in the perfectly controlled equal opportunity setting...the same family!!!! But their individual choices and talents led to different economic circumstances. And in family"empires" like the Hilton's or Ford where massive wealth is passed down, they found they actually don't last much longer than 2 or 3 generations before the grand kids and great-grand kids squander the wealth. I was actually just sitting in the airport with a professor of family studies who taught at the Harvard Business School who has spent his career studying this. He explained that the children of the "empire builder" grow up watching their father (or mother) build a powerful business from the ground up, so they appreciate the hard work and usually follow suit and retain or even expand the wealth. Their kids however (the builder's grand kids) grow up from babes with massive wealth and know nothing of the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" principle, so they squander their inheritance (think Paris Hilton). Then by the time THEY have kids, the wealth is gone and they find themselves back in the middle class. What is the point of this very common, very real trend? It shows us that when people simply receive money without the personal experience to understand the sacrifice, work ethic, and discipline behind the earning of that money, then wealth is not built. Standards of living are not raised, and most importantly, children are not taught correct principles and work ethic is replaced with entitlement. Just forget politics for a second and really ask yourself, is giving handouts really the answer? For the VAST VAST majority of these people they do have the ability to pull themselves up...and we shouldn't rlob them of that invaluable experience. JRD