When I look around the country, I see the same thing that many of you see and that is the absolute absence of personal responsibility today. This is not a new phenomenon or a sudden epiphany that I have seen the light on. This is just the first time that I had the voice to lend to this observation. I’m not naïve about politics and know that most political parties rely on ignorance and apathy to maintain power, but it is the first time that I’ve seen its’ endemic use by a party to cement its’ power position and enslave a people. Yes I did say enslave, for what is it when a people relinquish all personal responsibility for the choices they make in their daily lives. From educating our children to protecting our families, from our success in business and the incomes we make to the choice of cars we buy. We the people, as a nation, are forgetting what it was that made us great, made us the envy of the whole world and every man, woman and child not lucky enough to be born in this great land.
The definition of a slave is “a person entirely under the domination of some influence or person”. Being entirely under the influence is the same no matter what manner or form it takes, whether it’s a drug like cocaine or suckling from teat of the Federal Government.
What most people don’t understand is that what we are seeing is our nation being dragged, kicking and screaming, down the path of Socialism. H.G. Bohn once wrote “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Socialism is nothing but empty promises based on good intentions. Socialists want people to have equal outcomes so all people are the same and equal happiness, but people don’t work that way. People, and most especially Americans, are a competitive lot. We don’t like to lose, we don’t like to come in second place, and we absolutely positively cannot stand when someone gets in our way and tells us we can’t do something. So why are we standing for a Socialist President that says we can’t succeed unless “the Government”, translated meaning him, holds our hand and helps us every step of the way. In his world, the Wild West wouldn’t have been settled until a focus group in Washington had assembled the best and brightest theorists in exploration to discuss the Pros and Cons of moving past the Mississippi. We may have gotten around to it sometime in the late 20th Century instead of the 1800’s. The pioneers of the Old West would smack us silly if they saw what we were doing to our country and ourselves.
I have 3 children aged 11 almost 12, 9 and 20 months and all of this reminds me of two incidents that happened with my children in the past week.
My daughter is the 9 year old. My oldest son and she were arguing about something stupid, like most kids arguments are at this age. Anyway, my son said something to the effect to her that he was trying so hard because he wanted to be special. My daughter said back to him “Everybody’s special dummy.” At this point I had to chime in and said to her “If everybody’s special sweetie, then nobody is.” She was confused until I explained to her that most people are just ordinary people, going through their day oblivious to the big picture and happy in their ignorance. Then there are those people that are truly Extraordinary, people that act as a guide post to the expansion of the human experience and lead mankind out of the darkness and into the light. Mankind needs those people, men and women both, to act as the beacon to strive toward. Without them, the human race would stagnate and move backward and disappear into the mediocrity of history.
Yes I do speak like this with my children, but if they don’t understand what the words mean I hand them a dictionary and help them look it up. I know, tough love, but my children won’t be children forever.
The second incident happened this morning. My oldest son said he was sick and my wife let him stay home from school because of it. About 45 minutes after she headed to work and I was getting my other 2 children ready for school, I went in and checked on him. I found him quickly trying to shove his remote under his sheets after having quickly turned off his TV. I suspected he was trying to pull a fast one on us, but I trusted him. What a dumb parent I was. At this point I ordered him to get dressed for school and gave him an earful about honesty, integrity and consequences.
He was about 45 minutes late when we arrived at the school a little while later. I walked him into the office and told the secretary that he was just fine and he needed to go to class. She gave him his pass and sent him on his way. She then asked me to fill out the excuse form to put on file. On the form in the section labeled “Reason for Absence” I wrote Playing sick. She looked at the form and stopped for about 5 seconds without saying a word. I waited. She then asked me if I was sure that I wanted to write this because he would get an Unexcused Absence and have detention. I looked her dead in the eye and said “That’s his problem. He earned it.” She looked shocked. She slowly said “OoooK” and filed it.
I ask anyone reading this how was this wrong. My son or any of my other children will be responsible for their own actions, good or bad, right or wrong and reap the rewards or pay the consequences, whatever that may be.
What that let me know right there is that our teachers are educating our children that everyone is the same no matter their skills or intelligence and that the motto is not “3 strikes and you’re out” but that it really is “3 strikes and you’re not out, but will talk about what is making you misbehave and find out how you feel about being in trouble and then will give you another 40 chances and then you still won’t be out.” What kind of adults are we making them into?
That’s right, they are trying to make them into good little Socialists and in a Socialists Utopia nobody needs to grow up because the State will make all the hard decisions for you.
I’m just an American Nobody, just like you, but this needs to be stopped, but don’t you do what has become the American thing to do and let someone else do it for you. We need to stop outsourcing our responsibilities to other institutions and do what it has always been the quintessential American thing. We need to do it ourselves, in our homes, in our churches, in our families and in each and every one of our daily lives.
Our future is not written and it will be you and I that will decide what the pages of history compose about us and our times. Let’s not outsource our chapter to others. Sit down, grab the pen and do the hard work. It’s in our hands America.
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