Rant: The Entitlement Mentality

The Entitlement Mentality of our generation is a degenerative disease.

The Entitlement Mentality has created a militia of ragged, angry civilians of all races and backgrounds.

Like him or not (I happen to enjoy him from time to time), Rush Limbaugh had it right when he put the Hurricane Katrina mess into context: "What we've seen in New Orleans is first and foremost the utter failure of generation after generation after generation of the entitlement mentality."

Flood victims had been victimized twice, once by nature and again by the perception that government would somehow save them from nature's rage, he said. "They had no idea what to do because they've been told somebody else was going to fix it." After fostering dependency among the citizens of New Orleans, Limbaugh said state and local officials failed to respond to the dependency they helped create. And not just local and state, but federal as well.

As far as the public is concerned, the promises from Washington to fix the reading problems Tommy's having at his local 5th grade class is a sign that they know what's going on and have the power to fix it. Then a hurricane comes (with days of advance notice) and everyone is wondering why the government didn't bring in every helicopter, ship and airplane to bring everyone out just before the storm hit. And why wasn't there food to eat, or clean porta-johns to use? And why wasn't everyone in New Orleans who didn't have the money to buy a car, given one by the Federal government? I mean, if Oprah can give away cars to her audience, surely Washington can find it in their hearts and pockets to pony up a Chevy, or at least (if unfortunately) a Kia.

Beginning in the 1850's we began to turn over control of our education to the government. Poor communities and distant farm children needed a place to grow and learn and climb the ladder of American society. And surely, that was a noble goal. But 150 years later we have given over the right to teach our children everything from how to eat right and who made the universe to sex education and career planning. All this, so mom and dad can spend their time making more money so they can buy a bigger house that is less and less occupied every year, and pay more and more taxes so that Tommy and Gina can be taught the very things God instructed parents to teach their children in the first place. Then we complain that the system isn't teaching what we want our children to learn.

I stated in another post on my personal blog that while churches that have been charged by God to take care of the "homeless, alien and without inheritance" build more beautiful buildings with glass atriums and larger parking lots, our individualistic mindset sentences us to the concept that we'd rather the government "servants" mop up the dirty mess, and keep our doorstep free from beggars and the needy.

Quarantine is the new charity: it benefits both sides.

I'm a Conservative who supports personal responsibility - I'm also a Christian man who expects the people of our local churches to fill the role the Government had to step into because we abrogated our responsibility. I don't presume to defend the previous Presidential administration in every respect just because it wasn't Obama; I believe it had only furthered our dependence upon it either by neglect or otherwise increasing our beauracracy. I don't presume to defend Republicans in general, or criticize Democrats in stereotype. Remember "Compassionate Conservatism"?

I do however, defend the office and the function it is charged to hold. More importantly, the initial purpose of the office. And it didn't include education, or entitlement programs or federal housing, it was to defend our nation against internal strife, crime and foreign invasion. I defend the right of any administration to conduct it's agenda domestically and foreign the way it sees appropriate, because we've given government that right in every capacity. Whether I agreed with Bush's Medicare Prescription benefit or not, it doesn't matter. Even if I don't like the way the politicians have conducted the Iraq war, or handled judicial nominations, or spent the tax dollars it has been trusted with, we placed government in the awkward position of relying on a simple majority vote to determine it's course. "Just poll it!" And now when it makes a decision we disagree with, we criticize it. We barely have the right to!

We (The Entitlement Generation) are hypo (and hyper) critical sucklings of a surrogate parent. When will it stop?!

Ok, I'm done.