Yes, its been a long time between postings.
The 2012 elections are only a memory. Obamacare is wriggling its way into our lives, both corporately and privately. The Fiscal Cliff has been sidestepped for the moment. The debt ceiling is proving to be as nimble as the Cheshire Cat.
And yet we survive.
The question is for how long? While special interests jockey for position in the buffet line that is the Federal teat, liberals and conservatives argue over increases in spending, cuts in spending, spending for the sake of spending.
And they kick the can a little farther down the road.
Sooner or later, someone's going to have to pay for all of this. Or, can we really get away with simply printing more and more money? Did it work for the Weimar Republic? Will Greece, Italy, and Spain ever prosper again without the EU printing more and more Euros?
In a perfect world, everyone would have plentiful health care, food, and shelter. Everyone would be in agreement and everyone would be happy to give to those who have not. But this is not the world we are developing.
Big government is an incubator.
Taking from those with more to give to those in need instills a sense of unfairness among those who are being taken from. This doesn't mean they are stingy, miserly, or mean spirited. It means they resent someone else deciding who should benefit from their hard work.
The intent is noble to be sure. And in some instances it takes a governmental institution to get something accomplished. But like everything else in our society we have let the pendulum swing too far.
Rather than encouraging hard working folks to reach into their pockets and give a helping hand to those in need, big government takes what it believes is its fair share and does the redistributing itself. This does nothing to engender philanthropy and everything to develop a bunker mentality when it comes to taxes of any kind.
Giving what it takes from others instills in those receiving a sense of resentment that they must accept handouts, presumably taken from those who are wealthy enough to have more than they need and who are forced through taxation to share. It creates animosity and class welfare. It creates anger in those who receive when they feel threatened at the thought of losing any of the handouts that they need.
Even the nomenclature instills animosity. Entitlements - This is not just needed, it is deserved. Rich- If you own more than I do you are rich and if you are rich you must have gotten that way on the backs of the poor.
Steadily, we are driving a wedge between these two groups.
For the last fifty years, the government has made itself the final arbiter in matters of conscience. We have driven God from the public arena. He cannot be mentioned in schools, courts, or other public venues. We are told this makes our schools, courts, etc, safer for all. We need not worry about someone trying to force their morality on us any longer.
But morality, like space, abhors a vacuum. The religious morality that sought to instill things like a sense of fair play, sharing with your neighbor, kindness to strangers, respect for others, has been replaced with the teaching of the good of the state. The state will tell you what fair is, who your neighbor is, what kindness is, who deserves respect.
We are the government. We have met the enemy, at it is us.
