Posted on 12/12/2008 5:41:10 AM PST by shortstop
Sink or swim.
That’s the American way.
At least it used to be. Back before we were a welfare state. Back when you rose or fell on the basis of your own choices, when you were free to decide, and free to reap the consequences of your decisions.
It was economic Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. If you were stupid or lazy, it sucked to be you. If you were smart and hard working, life could go pretty well.
But we don’t do that anymore. We have gelded the stallion of American achievement. We have removed the possibility of failure, and simultaneously removed the possibility of success.
Because you can’t have one if you don’t risk the other. You can’t truly win if you can’t truly lose. And in our big-government efforts to make sure there are no losers, we have assured that there will be no winners.
We have slipped into the gray homogenization of socialist equality, a lowest-common-denominator society in which rot, ruin and despair are the unavoidable outcome.
We are a nation of bailouts.
If a girl gets knocked up, we bail her out. If a guy drops out of school, we bail him out. If somebody’s a drunk, we bail him out. If she uses drugs, we bail her out. If people lack the discipline to budget their money and live within their means, we bail them out. If people are too irresponsible to hold a job and support themselves, we bail them out.
If they drive their company into the ground, we bail them out. If they mismanage billions and cripple the economy, we bail them out.
We reward the incompetents.
And when you do that you only create more of them. The negative consequences of stupidity typically teach people not to be stupid. But when there is no consequence for any number of personal failings – if there is always a welfare check or a government program or a bailout to save the idiots – those personal failings only become more common.
By taxing the prudent and wise, and bailing out the lazy and foolish, we reward and incentivize laziness and foolishness – and punish prudence and wisdom. For 40 years we’ve fought a war on poverty, with ever-more-expansive welfare programs, and that has done nothing but breed new cultures of personal failure and government dependence.
And having done that to our people, now we want to do it to our businesses.
From our banks to our car companies, the great symbols of American economic power have gone on welfare. New York City was once a monument of capitalist strength. It is now a hallmark of socialist weakness. Our banks once ruled the world, now they beg from the government and from foreigners enough money to limp half dead into the future.
And the massive manufactories of a generation ago are rusted and closed and our great companies are crippled. General Motors was once our largest business, now it is Wal-Mart. Once we made goods to sell the world, now we build stores to sell the world’s goods.
Any number of industries will tell you that if they don’t get a government bailout, they will fail. And they assure us they are too big to fail.
Which is preposterous.
No industry is so big that it must be freed from the consequences of choice and the marketplace. No person is so small that they are not ennobled by self-reliance and individual responsibility.
These are troubled times of great uncertainty. The house of cards erected over a generation is teetering in a moment, the lies and policies of greed and avarice threaten ruin and poverty. The way forward is uncertain and obscured.
Or at least that’s what we are supposed to believe.
The fact is that there is no confusion, there is no uncertainty, there is only a reluctance to follow principles and truth. We know what is right, we just don’t want to do it. There is a handhold we must have a firm grip on, it is common sense and the American values which have blessed us again and again.
Of course the bailouts are wrong. There is no justification in taking the money of one citizen to clean up the mess of another. Impoverishing millions to protect the riches of a few – be they bankers or CEOs or union bosses – is wrong.
This is America. We’re a sink-or-swim country.
It’s what made us strong.
And the opposite will make us weak.
GREAT quote; AND accurate. Thanks, Mr. Lonsberry..
>>>>>>>>>>>By taxing the prudent and wise, and bailing out the lazy and foolish, we reward and incentivize laziness and foolishness – and punish prudence and wisdom. For 40 years we’ve fought a war on poverty, with ever-more-expansive welfare programs, and that has done nothing but breed new cultures of personal failure and government dependence. <<<<<<<<<<<
A-Freakin men !!!
Hear, hear. Something even my dad and grandpa could agree with.
Excellent post. Says it all.
“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of their folly is to fill the world with fools.” - Herbert Spencer
bookmark
Greatest ever one line synopsis of this aspect of our downfall!
"Culture of personal failure" - how true and how sad.
But it generates loyalty to (and votes for) those who hand out the freebies.
And the more taxpayer money that flows through the government to feed the insatiable appetite for more handouts, the more opportunity for scams, skims, pork, and payoffs.
Liberals have created a monster and awarded themselves the job of feeding it with money extorted from a dwindling middle class.
Generations of politicians from both parties along with their pals have built personal fortunes and dynasties off the War On Poverty.
This is the true lasting legacy of LBJ who did as much, or more, than FDR to destroy America.
Yet election after election we see that the country is still split almost down the middle between this "Culture of personal failure" and those who still believe in the constitution, traditional American values and individual responsibility.
But government schools are surely moving the balance in the wrong direction as exemplified by the election of Obama and the vehement rejection of any criticism of, or inquiry into, his murky past and his anti-American values.
Time to don the life jackets.
We could be swimming awhile, with the course of action taken by present and future *Captains* and crew.
Well, have no fear. The way our industries have left the country, our markets are tanking, and our politics have us severely divided and without any level of competent leadership or a consitution that is upheld...I think this is the last year as the nation we have known.
Term Limits.
America is now faced with a Roman Senate who wants to rule over a welfare state.
The house MUST be cleaned and fumigated, laws must be changed and people need to awaken from their politically induced slumber.
Yep. We are Rome.
There is a justification now.
Recall the story of the Galveston hurricane of 1900, how the nun roped all the children together and tied herself on the same line...and thus assured they all drowned, whereas if she hadn't done that, some of them might have survived.
We're not sink-or-swim individually anymore, Mr. Lonsberry. We've been lashed together in the interdependent system of the socialist welfare state.
“We have removed the possibility of failure, and simultaneously removed the possibility of success.”
This quote made the whole article worth it.
“We are Rome.” Only they lasted several hundred years longer than it appears we will...although they didn´t have an atomic bomb.
I think the belief that hard work is rewarded in this country will allow us to ride on cruise control for another generation. It will be rocky, but will appear to resemble the pre-bailout America. After that, you might want to find a now homeland unless there is a serious cultural revolution for the better.
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