REFERENDUM ON NATIONAL CHARACTER
By Arnold Ahlert
(condensed)
We have become the most indebted nation in the history of the world. Sixteen trillion dollars of national debt, the lion’s share of which has been spent on social programs, is the ultimate testament to two overriding realities: One, no nation on earth has made a greater effort to eradicate poverty and take care of the truly disabled; and two, no nation on earth has made it easier to be “poor” and/or “disabled.”
Now one might think that a headlong rush towards national insolvency would sober up even the most bleeding of bleeding hearts among us. One would be wrong. Once the nobler aspects of the human condition have been tossed on the ash heap of history, a nation is reduced to a couple of equally simple and over-riding concepts, as in, “everybody else is doing it, why not me,” and its equally odious corollary, as in “screw everyone else, I’m getting mine.” Add some flavoring currently known as the “ninety-nine percent versus the one percent” and every iota of rotten behavior is imbued with enough “social justice” to rationalize virtually anything…
This is nothing less than a full-frontal assault on our national character. Or what used to be our national character until progressives convinced substantial numbers of Americans that success is something that should elicit feelings of envy, rather than admiration and a sense of aspiration. They have further convinced those same Americans that success can only be achieved at someone else’s expense…
In a time when most Americans had some sense of self-respect, a man appealing to peoples’ baser instincts under the banner of social justice would be recognized for the charlatan he truly is. Perhaps what is at stake is whether a majority of Americans still retain any sense of self-respect and dignity, or whether they can be convinced that whatever goes wrong in their lives is someone else’s fault.
Americans have always been their brother’s keeper. Whether they are willing to be their brother’s enabler – to the point of national suicide – remains to be seen. |
