Republican Congressional candidate Zach Dasher once said entitlements and welfare are forms of slavery.
Dasher who is the cousin to the Duck Dynasty family and challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Vance McAllister in Louisiana's 5th Congressional district made the comments six months ago on his Internet podcast Willingtothink.org.
Dasher has been endorsed in his challenge to McAllister by Sarah Palin and the Louisiana Tea Party.
"What about today, though? Does that still go today in America?" Dasher said on his podcast, contrasting Hebrew slavery with the history of slavery in the United States.
"Well, in Western society, we see these causes among us right now in 2014. How does our society deal with them? The answer is that with welfare, well, if you can't afford to pay for anything — you can't buy your own food, your own healthcare, your own education — well, what happens? Well, the government steps in and they say, 'We'll take care of that for you.' Isn't this a form of slavery, though? I would argue that it is."
Dasher continues by saying that prisoners are also "slaves to the state."
The congressional hopeful then adds if take government assistance, "you essentially become property of the state."
"If you are poor and you go to the state for help, you essentially become property of the state," he said. "And those entrenched in the entitlement culture are almost completely dependent on the state for their food, their shelter, their health care, their transportation, their education, and now even their cell phones."
"One could effectively argue that the state is their master," he adds.
Unlike Hebrew slavery, Dasher said, "under our system of slavery, one rarely escapes."
"They don't get out of slavery," he said. "In fact that's why we see generational entitlement. We have a system now that deals with poverty that no one ever escapes. At least in the Hebrew culture, you have to give them kudos that they're only there for six years. Folks in America, they're there for life."