Government dependence isn't freedom

As many of you know, my mother has not been well for the last months. Even with her most recent hospitalization, she continues to fight to not simply surrender her life. I was thinking about that in the context of Obama’s contemptible pronouncement in support of Communism, at Osawatomie High School, in Kansas.

Quite a few people I know, and several of my very good friends, have taken huge financial and career hits in the last three years. They were the kinds of hits, many would not have recovered from – after all its one thing to lose the kind of salaries, investments, and lifestyles enjoyed – it is totally another to lose all of that, as well as homes, families, and personal belongings. Especially in the unforgiving waters of peer appearance.

But, as I was thinking about what myself and several friends/acquaintances experienced, I realized we were in a way no different than my mother. Which brought me to the question of why do we fight? My quick answer was: because that’s what we know. Let me explain.

My mother is a pre-depression child. She is also someone who lived through it. It was either fight to live or die and her generation passed that on to myself and those I reference. Her generation didn’t look for handouts or government subsidies. They joined together, helped one another and created opportunity for themselves and whenever possible for one another. It wasn’t easy – it demanded they be flexible and for them to bear the weight of what the change in their lives meant.

But they were from a time that people had to fend for themselves and that’s what is missing today. Most in the post baby-boomer generation not only forget, but do not realize, there was a time, that if you wanted a home to live in you had to build it. They don’t realize that only way you had steak, chicken, or ham was if you grew the cow, chicken, or pig yourself and then butchered same. They forget that the way the most successful businesses started was to meet a need. And most importantly what most of the post baby-boomer generation do not realize is that the rugged individualism, Obama defined as a failure, is why we have cities, towns, and industry west of the Colorado River.

Those I referenced as having gone through seismic upheavals in our lives and have either bounced back or are bouncing back, come from a day and age when people didn’t look to government. The fight in those of our generation was based on the examples of our families and those who had lived through the depression. I submit that government care and dependence have done nothing, but breed generations of people who instinctively give up and turn to government, instead of creating ways to weather the realities of life.

The question I ask is what will it be like when we old-school, do it yourself, baby-boomers are gone? Many of you tell me how your parents, and/or grandparents, struggled and ultimately succeeded. Or how the testimony of their refusal to surrender to the hardships and realities of life, taught you how to persevere.

But what will people do when the example becomes turn to government? It will be necessary to kow-tow and submit to every foolish folly, of a socialist, politically correct, government demanding people comply with its edicts or they will not receive help. Gone will be the mindset of my generation and that of our parents/grandparents. My grandmother swore she would rather starve, than take anything from government. In fact, my grandmother never trusted government to do anything for her other than deliver the mail and protect us “from the Russians.” My family voted in every election I can remember, but they didn’t vote for politicians to make decisions for them – they voted because they viewed it as the highest act of citizenship. They didn’t vote for someone to take care of them, expand government into their daily lives, or to have people become government dependent.

But today, as I experienced when I still owned my business, people would rather take government care than get it themselves. As one of my followers commented the other day – a person they offered work turned them down, because to accept more hours would have impacted the person’s government care, i.e., food stamps, negatively.

The value of the mindset of families from my generation is evidenced in the way baby-boomers handled life’s realities. Many of those I referenced at the beginning of this rant did not return to the career fields they left. Most took tremendous salary cuts and dramatic changes in lifestyle, but they/we are recovering and we are doing it because we refused to say die, and because we relied on self not government care. The rest will come.

The present generation notwithstanding, the next generation will know only government care unless we are somehow able to turn them from same. Dependence on self allows one to be free, dependence upon government, ensures servitude and forced compliance. I was not raise to accept either of those things, and I have instilled those feelings in my child. And the friends I referenced, have instilled the same qualities into their children. That said, our children may be pariahs to those who sup from breasts of government, but they will be free.