The Left is so fond of exhorting their opponents to ‘compromise’. The trouble is, the Left each year moves further and further to the left – pulling that center-point of compromise further and further left. Compromise with totalitarian ideals smacks of surrender. Neville Chamberlain made a deal with the devil — and the world was no better for it.
Youthful Flashback: My dad holding a $20 bill in his hand… he hesitates and looks at me. First year of college, I was heading off to Hollywood with some pals for a concert and I had asking him if I could have some spending cash.
“I’m not sure I’m doing you a favor giving you this,” he said with a faint crinkle in his eye. I just made a clever joke and thanked him and was off for rock’n’roll heaven. Years later, it came to me what he was saying. Had I planned ahead and worked and earned the twenty bucks I’d have been further on up the road of becoming a man. I would have developed a greater sense of independence, capability and competence; and I would have foreshortened greatly my prolonged adolescence. (Some say extreeeemely prolonged.)
We do our kids no favors when we fail to teach them that if they want something, they need to get their butts in gear and go earn it. And I think we’re losing that in our country. I see our greater national malaise as being symptomatic of this failure. We have failed to instill the basic work ethic in a large segment of our society. Rather than gazing upon the frontier of their future with an eager lust of conquest and adventure…an ardent desire to become something exceptional, to produce great things… too many look out and see only a land of great abundance — to which they are entitled. And the cause of that entitlement is for no reason other than that they breathe air.
It’s an easy seduction, the Entitlement Riff. This is America, the land of Freedom. I can do what I want. I can acquire what I want. I’m an American. Therefore, I should have what I want. And I will vote into office anyone who promises me that if they’re elected to public office, then I will get what I want. And anyone who disagrees is a greedy, racist, Republican bigot homophobe.
(No, I’ve never worked for the New York Times but thanks for asking.)
When our top leaders can get away with exhorting us straight-faced to claim our ‘rights’ to the fruits of other people’s efforts; there is a national epidemic of envy afoot. Envy leads to misery and anger. Evil people harness that energy for their own power and ‘workers revolutions’ are spawned. The means of production is taken by violence or threat of violence by ‘The People’. Only the evil, the petulant, or the willfully ignorant refuse history’s lesson of what an ultimately endless and downward spiral-staircase of despair and ruination to which this leads mankind. Close to a hundred million people in the last century – innocents – murdered by such despotic notions.
Victimhood. We look at our plight (whatever that may be)…and we see injustice. And if we don’t see injustice, just listen to NPR, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, or any variety of mainstream media news sources, and they’ll tell you – our society is unjust and you need to be compensated for it. Paid reparations. You got it coming.
It’s easy to fall into. Hey, all my friends and family are doin’ it, what the hell! Just go along with it. The Money-for-Nothing, Where’s-My-Check, Low-Hangin’ Fruit Express.
And the rationale for it all…. aw, that’s easy! Rather than looking to ourselves for the source of our personal troubles and challenges…we look to our neighbor and covet what they have and we don’t. Buttressed by the arguments of the Left, we see this disparity of property ownership as a Great American Injustice. We’re good people – why shouldn’t we have more? It’s not fair.
And we fabricate cause – we affixed blame. It’s those rich people’s fault I don’t have more. They’re taking too much. There’s not enough left for me. It’s their fault I’m poor.
It’s not fair. There should be a law.
The Something-for-Nothing promise has long lured the shiftless and greedy to the polling place to vote for the latest Snake-oil salesman who promises great rewards for a pittance of a price. A couple hundred years ago as this nation was climbing onto its feet, fly-by-night salesmen roamed the new land selling remedies of all sorts – available to all for mere pocket change. Snake-oil was one such ointment, brought over from China and sold as a ‘remedy to relieve all pains’. Though some claimed it worked, it soon became known as a false panacea with dubious effectiveness. And often these energetic sure-cure hawkers were run out of town as charlatans and shysters.
I wonder how those townspeople would deal with our current White House occupant.
Because our Snake-oil-Salesman-in-Chief is selling us a new remedy (that’s not so new): A cure-all to heal what ails us. A new re-envisioned America. A new ‘re-invented’ America. In this America, no one ever will go hungry. No one will ever go broke. No one will ever want for anything. Because everything will be provided, at no cost to them, by the Government. Isn’t that fantastic!? We no longer have to struggle. And the checks will be delivered to our door. We don’t have to worry, we don’t have to work; hell, we don’t even have to get out of bed! Electronic transfers will happen automatically. Finally, we’ve accomplished what no man or group of men have ever been able to accomplish in human history – a self-generating, perpetual-motion machine. All known physical laws defied by the magnificent and exalted Leader of the New Global Order — Barack Hussein Obama. I’m not sure any of you fully grasp what this huge accomplishment portends! A new system of human interaction. Human nature reversed! Rather than people acting first and foremost in their own self-interest, human beings are now unleashed to explore the higher goals of Universal Mind. A New Enlightenment is upon us, o my brothers and sisters…a new world realized…in which the lion will lay down with the lamb…and the bum on the street can help himself with impunity to the contents of your pockets. It is a great day indeed.
However…sadly…many of you are still under the mistaken notion that what’s yours…is yours. This is an old model, an outdated way of thinking. For, after all, why should you have so much, when so many others have so little? Is that fair?
Well actually, yes. As long as you didn’t break the law and acquired what’s yours legally, of course it’s fair. Ethics are the gray area here – and this is the Great Divide between Left and Right. The Left thinks it is unethical that a person work, risk and struggle to become successful and then get to actually keep what he earned. The Left thinks he should have to be pinged for his success (and at a higher rate than the rest of us) and the proceeds be fed into the government coffers to be distributed according to government’s pleasure. The Right thinks that the government, when it ‘redistributes’ his hard-earned wealth to those who haven’t earned it, are stealing from them. As one capitalist put it, “At least the Highwayman has the decency to wear a mask.” The Left think it’s government’s job to ration out charitable compassion – the Right believes that in a free society, it is up to the individual to decide to whom and when to administer charity. The President last week blamed much of our economic woes on “unpaid-for tax cuts… that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade”.
Does he just make these numbers up as he goes along?
‘Unpaid-for tax cuts’. Will somebody please explain to me the logic of that phrase the President is so enamored with? You won’t be able to because logic is not factor in the phrase – to try to prop that old turd up with logic would ignite a mobius in which the head is chasing the tail and well…only a proctologist can undo it. This may explain a commonly recurring posture of so many on the Left. No mention of the fact that reducing taxes actually increases tax revenues by broadening the tax base. I guess they don’t teach that at Harvard. (What DO they teach?) I guess they also don’t teach this – that if you take money from those who work and give it to those who don’t…you shouldn’t be surprised when the number who work decreases and the number who don’t increases.
It pains me deeply to see the America I grew up with fast-become a footnote in history. Yeah, it was great while it lasted, but sayonara, baby. We got a New New Deal. A ‘fundamentally transformed’ chicken-in-every-pot America. The Great Workers’ Paradise.
Bullshit.
We are in debt up to our eyeballs to China, we’re at war with a fanatical Cult of Terror hell-bent on destroying us; and at the same time were facing the worst financial collapse in history, our domestic fiscal policy more closely resembles Eurotrash socialism than it does the economic boom of the ’50’s and 60’s. Our leader is laughed at by our enemies and distrusted by our allies. American business is hunkered down, consolidating resources, afraid to expand or hire new workers because they are fearful what this business-hostile president might hit them with next.
And yes, Mr. Obama is a very charming and likable man. But all the charm in the world won’t keep our markets from spiraling down the tubes, or our enemies from striking us around the globe, or our people from losing faith in our own way of life. Mr. Obama and his Leftist cronies are ruining America. My great grandchildren will still be cleaning up the mess decades after I’ve passed.
Unless we fix it now. I say it’s time to undo this nation’s undoing. It’s time to say NO to the President’s plans to ‘fundamentally transform’ this nation. It’s time to work daily to see that every Lefty in government is unemployed come 2013.
Don’t mean to sound ungrateful, Mr. President…
…but I don’t want my great nation to become un-great.
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