Feeling stressed about the weather? Don’t worry. The government loves you.

That’s the perplexing message from Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. When snow and ice swept through the state in early January, Beshear made a rather bizarre post on X (formerly known as Twitter).

“If you or someone you know is dealing with the emotional distress of compounding traumatic weather events, call the Disaster Distress Hotline,” the Governor wrote, and then added, “We love you and we are here for you.”

The absurdities of this post abound and reflect so much that has gone awry in the way Americans on the political left think about the role of government.

If you’re like me, you have never heard of the Disaster Distress Hotline, but it has been around since 2012, when the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) received funding to assist citizens in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

SAMHSA, which spends around $8 billion of taxpayer money per year, in turn pays the nonprofit Vibrant Emotional Health to administer the hotline. In 2024, Vibrant was award $80 million over two years to administer the disaster hotline and the national suicide prevention hotline.

Suicide prevention is obviously an important goal, and in the immediate wake of a disaster, there’s a place for a hotline to connect survivors with resources for recovery. When tornadoes demolished swathes of Kentucky in 2021, we saw both the financial and the emotional toll to victims, a toll that did not immediately subside when the physical damage was cleaned up.

But do we really need a hotline for snowstorms and power outages? These are stressful events, especially for those of limited financial means. But why wouldn’t the Governor first encourage people to reach out to local churches and nonprofit entities for help?

Instead, Beshear encourages a world where those with fewer resources are not just dependent on the government for financial benefits, but also for emotional support. This is a governor who mistakes an expensive, faceless government bureaucracy for “love.”

Paradoxically, this is also a governor who unnecessarily tried to shut down schools, businesses and churches for months during COVID with insufficient regard for the “emotional distress” it caused. But of course, even then what he meant by “love” was the heavy, soulless hand of the state depriving you of genuine community.

Marriage, families, neighborhoods, civic organizations, and faith communities have all been in steady decline thanks to policies advocated by the political left. Now that these sources of genuine community are gone from so many people’s lives, the left sees only a world of isolated individuals dependent on an all-powerful state.

The government cannot love you. Andy Beshear can personally love you, but only if he’s directly involved in your life, giving of his personal time and resources to help you. It’s not love when he’s using someone else’s money or some government contractor on the other end of a telephone line.

There may be a place for a taxpayer-funded disaster hotline. But it’s no replacement for community. It’s not for dealing with the normal stresses of routine weather patterns. And it’s not “love.”

Gary Houchens, PhD, is professor of education administration and director of the educational leadership doctoral program at Western Kentucky University.