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Townhall...
A Life Lesson
By Cal Thomas
ARCHBOLD, Ohio -- Here in Middle America, where farmland extends to the
horizon, I pass an inspirational yard sign: “Self-Control: Having a
Life Purpose Bigger Than Self.”
It’s a message our representatives in Washington would do well to
learn, especially after months of raucous partisan bickering that
nearly culminated in another “government shutdown.”
Here in Archbold farmers still labor to produce crops from the soil. In
Washington, liberal politicians and lobbyists labor to produce careers
for themselves and pry more “entitlements” from overburdened taxpayers
to give to people who in some cases have not earned them. People have
been taught envy and entitlement in ways that would have shocked and
angered our relatives who survived the Great Depression on far less.
A simple web search finds numerous Depression-era survival stories,
which puts into perspective for those living now the concept of living
through “hard times.”
In a 2009 story in the Saginaw News, writer Sarah Nothelfer quoted
79-year-old Jean R. Beach, who compared the 1930s with today: “To me,
as a country, we’ve been on a binge. Now comes the time to put things
in order.”
Carrie Iles, 87, said: “I have good memories of those days. We didn’t
have it good, but we always had enough.” Imagine, good memories of the
Depression and thankfulness for having enough.
In 2011, too many Americans complain, not because they don’t have what
they truly need, but because they don’t have what they want, and worse,
what they feel “entitled to.” Too many suffer from an addiction to
government checks.
As Stephen Moore wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal, “there are
nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million)
than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact
reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers
in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the
government.” And “Every state in America today except for two --
Indiana and Wisconsin -- has more government workers on the payroll
than people manufacturing industrial goods.”
As the party of government, Democrats have a special interest in
increasing individual reliance on the state because it keeps them in
power. Among the many problems with that position is that at some
point, consumers of other people’s wealth become a majority. In order
to sustain what those non-producers expect, government must borrow
increasing amounts of money until we arrive at where we are today --
unable to pay our bills and dependent on foreign governments, chiefly
China, because no one wants to say “no” to what anyone wants.
What to do? Instead of demanding ever more from government, we must
reclaim those basic virtues from The Greatest Generation and begin to
do more for ourselves. That means younger people must take charge of
their own retirement. It also means more people must stop worrying
about health care and begin to focus on staying well. The healthier we
are, the less we will need doctors, hospitals and medicine.
We can’t go on as we have been. The kabuki theater that passes for
reasoned debate in Washington is nothing more than rhetoric that has
been tested before focus groups for political gain. Too many
politicians are telling their constituents, not necessarily what they
believe, but what they think they want to hear. And this is why little
gets done in Washington and why we are losing our liberty.
Back to that 2009 Saginaw, Mich., story about Depression survivors and
what they think of today’s complainers: “What happened,” said the Rev.
Edward R. Pankow, 80, pastor-emeritus at St. Peter Lutheran Church in
Hemlock, “is people just got too much too easily. The more you wanted,
the more you got.”
Democrats hauled out their familiar playbook about starving grannies
and women who would supposedly be denied treatment for breast cancer if
the government had shut down. This time it didn’t work.
It was clear Republicans won round one of the budget battle when Obama
adviser David Plouffe said on “Meet the Press” last Sunday that the
president would seek new cuts, even in Medicare and Medicaid. Can they
keep up the momentum?
Read it at Townhall
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