By Michael McCune
I was often told by instructors, while discussing the shortcomings found in my blue book essays, “Your biggest problem is you haven’t answered the real question.”
It is thus also with government’s eternal struggle to make the pathway to success an even ascent for all. Only those who actually construct their own Ladder to Success have a chance of reaching the goal. Success takes effort and government interference blunts that effort. Success takes dedication, government regulations would have us believe all are to be rewarded equally–regardless of effort.
The struggle by governing boards of the European Union, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund to find an acceptable answer for the Greek debt is a prime example. The Greeks, for whatever reason, didn’t construct a ladder for Greek success but instead allowed their government to soft-soap the effects of indolent lifestyles which will lead to another fiscal default.
The result is Greece has much more debt than it can ever repay and has been on the brink of collapse seemingly since the mid 60s. The internal pressure coming from a populace that doesn’t want to make the effort to succeed is running headlong into the irrefutable reality the lifestyle provided is directly from dreamland. Living demands an effort be made to hold onto that life.
But as bad as Greece is, our own U.S. “free society” is running against the pressure of a long over-indulged populace. The “OWS” crowd and their “Tax the Rich” mantra is a prime example of what is wrong. Those people want success handed to them. They want those who constructed their Ladder of Success to now hand over the rewards they have reached through effort. Their education experience, directed by government, has taught them all are to be rewarded equally.
Actually the only ones who have to hand anything over are those who didn’t fall into the government’s “Too-Big-To-Fail” arena. Every company, employee or shareholder of those “Too-Big-To-Fail” places need to be chastised by the OWS mob directly because those entities aren’t where they are at because of blood, sweat and tears any more but due entirely to the tax-funded handouts from government. Government was able to do this because it sucks the lifeblood from every success story in its misguided effort to “provide for all.” That is the basis of the socialistic state we find ourselves in today.
It started innocently enough with the first property tax assessment for schools. Who can argue that the education benefits provided did NOT help our society grow dramatically during the past 150 years and provided the basis for America’s rise in the world standings after World War I? But today, through government interference, that advantage has been negated. The newest generation going through the system and just out of it is ruined by government that is akin to a hamster’s treadmill–no matter how fast you run no forward progress is achieved–and is losing the academic battle to places where a decided emphasis on education as a privilege not a right is voiced.
Reading the Constitution provides not one iota of a hint that education is a federal government area of concern. Yet here we are. The national experiment in education is failing. If the education system gave me their current answers in blue book form I’d have to inform it, “Your biggest problem is you haven’t answered the real question.” The question remains, “What good is a system where education is considered a right and not a privilege?”
This is where government interference blunts effort and will lead to fiscal disaster as we are witnessing with directionless, effortless OWS youth churned out by the system today. What is the difference between a Grecian Parliamentary Member saying, “The people won’t stand for austerity programs, just give us money to continue breathing” and a State Legislature seeking exemption from a national law in the U.S.? In Greece it was handed out as a boon, in the U.S. it was handed out as “social justice”. Either way it was approved as a “right.” The results, distressingly, are the same. The populace grows accustomed to the hand of government aiding them in their daily lives. It robs them of effort.
Whether it is a school district saddled with too many tenured, educated idiots sitting on the collective boards, administrations or in the classroom or with too many tenured, unteachable idiots occupying the seats and disrupting those who have the need to learn, the only solution to the problem is to eliminate the “right” and go back to “privilege” in all aspects of society. Including the areas of home ownership, food, employment and education.
Nobody can remove a right from another person. However, you only keep a privilege as long as you have earned it. That lesson has been lost or omitted from the OWS participants’ education. Real education has been denied them by permissive me-first parents, watered-down community spirit and a benevolent government. They can no longer construct a Ladder of Success because all the productive DNA has been removed from their system.
In the “Land God Blessed”, that is the ultimate indictment against what our goals have become today.
