It came to me the other day that
the problem we really have in our country today, the world for that matter is
the concept that the government can “give” someone anything. People want to believe the government
can give them things, things they “deserve.”
The problem is that the
government has nothing to “give” that it has not taken at the point of a gun
from its citizens and other residents.
The government can only take from those who produce to fund those who do
not. Thus, with welfare and its
cousins, government encourages those who do not produce and discourages those
who do produce.
When we established this government,
a government of the people, by
the people, for the people was a servant of the people, those who worked for it
were termed public servants.
Servant, a term used for those who serve at the pleasure of their
masters.
We now have a government which is
not elected, a bureaucracy which is self-contained and self sustaining, which
makes not law, but regulation which has the force of law and is answerable to
no one. We elect representatives
based on what they claim they can “give” us from the government coffers.
There is no free lunch. I can buy you lunch, you can buy me
lunch. The lunch is not free, even
if the restaurant buys it for us.
Someone has to pay.
Someone has to pay for
everything. So, if society is to
be successful, everyone has to work to pay for what they want and what they
need.
This problem has been around
since Cicero wrote his message:
Do not blame Caesar, blame the
people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and
rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and given him
triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the
Forum of the “new wonderful good society” which shall now be Rome’s,
interpreted to mean "more money, more ease, more security, and more living
fatly at the expense of the industrious".”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
and since Paul wrote his second
letter to the Thessalonians, Chapter 3, Verse 10:
… if any would not
work, neither should he eat.
The current president got in to
office and intends to stay in office by offering your money to those who don’t
feel like going to work.
If we do not return to a
Constitutional Republic, we will founder, consider the words of Alexis de Tocqueville:
“A democracy cannot exist as a
permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that
they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment
on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits
from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over
loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the
world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
