Posted on 12/10/2002 10:36:08 PM PST by Sir Gawain
This one sentence, the ideas contained therein supported by both major parties, will one day be written as the epitaph of our Nation.
Sad....that in this time of our Nation's history...so MANY are so afraid of the REAL definition of Freedom.
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
redrock
I'm rooting for papa, to kick his dumb**** son's smelly *** from here to eternity.
For what ... the Good Death?
At least this poor fellow will be spared the pain of knowing how he's putting his kids (if he has any) through the agony of watching him get old and die from a suitable distance from the Institution that provides fulltime Family Services.
Euthanasia (and assisted suicide) will be in place well before it's his turn to take some "individual responsibility" and off himself instead of shuffling along to a natural death every bit as unplanned and unexpected as his conception.
[P.S. I did think the Ill Quaeda thing was funny and do understand where he's coming from. Also think he's definitely spot on where the behemoth of Socialized Managed Care is concerned. I just see no reason to lobby, however obliquely, for the inevitable, that's all.]
I understand where you're coming from but this rabid individualism masquerading as "personal responsibility" is precisely the atomistic bent which landed us mothers "responsible" enough to abort their kids and Kervorkian patients "responsible" enough to kill themselves rather than be a burden.
Birth and death are issues for Families. No one comes into this world of their own accord and most are attended by others on their way out. Who, if not the family, is responsible?
:^)
It is NOT up to Government to decide for us....or to take away the Right to our lives.
redrock
I thought this was pretty much a conservative forum. I didn't realize how many of you support these liberal, socialistic, Democrat ideas.
Well you have pretty well proved the point T. E. Ruppenthal has made. Most people only want to fleece as many as they can before they die. It's the Republican way, evidently.
Hank
Have you repaid all the money your "parasite" parents spent on you to bring you your self-sufficient station in life?
Have a dekko at the Ten Commandments: honoring one's father is a Good Thing.
You are headed down exactly that atomistic bent they want you to take.
One really groovy thing about setting up the communists as bogeyman all these years was the ability of some -- like that Diva of Selfishness Rand and others -- to turn altruism into an evil and render selflessness an absolutely incomprensible notion.
There is no greater love than for a man to lay down his life for a friend .... much less a closely related member of this Family of Man.
As human beings, we are responsible for and obligated to each other. Either we realize that at the family level (starting with the birthing and rearing of the children we off or institutionalize with ease these days) or the State steps in.
Evil loves a vacuum.
This Walden Pond utopian vision of the Self-Reliant man is a ruse.
Folks should be always Personally Accountable for their actions (especially the State's actors!) but they are not always in a position to be responsible for themselves and are rarely without some responsibility for another ... whether or not it's being in direct proportion to their regard for others allows them to realize it at all.
Only when Pop is footing the bills. After that, up the morphine drip.
Part of the trouble, actually, given the fact that the only thing to be "conserved" or maintained at the moment is an essentially liberal, leftist socialist state. Scratching the surface of the rhetoric reveals not a lot of differences between the parties.
I'll never forget feeling I'd just been slugged in the solar plexus the day I was ranting on Gore's "faithbased partnerships" only to have someone inform me Gore had "stolen" the idea from Bush.
I believe this was before I'd realized abortion, environmentalism and population control were GOP policies so I was still taken by surprise and bewildered at such times.
So ... it's not so much "Republican" or "Democrat" but rather the Materialists v. the rest of us.
... Randian Selfishness and soulless capitalism pitted against death to self and a natural moral law that trumps the marketplace.
... Passing judgment based on Accidents of Personality, Time and Circumstance versus ensuring Justice and Dignity in accord with Essential and Enduring Being.
... Concern over the "crisis" and maudlin pity masquerading as charity and sympathy.
I got an idea ... why not frame him as a threat to national security, sic the Feds on him and have him put away in a penitiary with three squares, bed and medical care for life?
(Just make sure you don't mess with any of his pension or other benefits to which you may be entitled as a family member.)
Leave it to you to come up with the perfect(final?) solution.
I understand your argument but it doesn't hold up ... particularly these days when most parents feel they've done their part by not aborting the things and at least feeding them through age 18.
Many of us are blessed with parents and family who not only fed, clothed and sheltered us but bestowed much love and ensured that we obtained the education, endured the discipline and were granted the extras which allowed us to live life to the fullest.
Many are not.
I don't think you can premise the honoring of parents on how well the parents honored you as a their child. I realize that's only human but also "only human" is the fact that honoring the parents is one of those essential elements of natural law that pops up in all sorts of civilizations ... absolutely separated by time, proximity, culture and faith.
Most folks always wish better for their kids than they had themselves. I think perhaps the math of the equation lies somewhere therein. It must be an excrutiatingly painful journey to triumph over the errors of one's own parents such that you can do for them what they never once did for you but I suspect it's still the right thing to do.
Honoring your father is great. Stealing my money to do so isn't.
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