SPOOF SPACE BY STEELE CODDINGTON | FEBRUARY 4, 2015
Is America self-destructing?
There was much discussion some time ago over the doctor referred to as "Doctor Death," with debate focused on his participation in assisted suicide. The entire subject is sadly troubling with many points of view, and the subject presents a similarly troubling analogy to serious discussions on the question of the self-destruction of a nation. Is America committing suicide in a cultural context, terminating a national history of belief that celebrates personal independence and the freedom to achieve on your own with a new philosophy of treatment called "fundamental transformation"? Are we so sick that we need doctors whose cure consists of the establishment of radical progressive medicine involving change that is quackery disguised in the placebo of Social Justice? The medicine of distribution of wealth, radical economic failures, addiction to obscene borrowing, bloated government corruption and increased access to questionable hand-outs has never cured any disease!
George Will, a brilliant analyst on government, recently entitled an article, "How America has stopped being America," where he quoted data published in National Affairs by Nicholas Eberstadt, confirming the idea of a changing culture in America. The article described the effect of how the implementation of progressives’ (and Obama) agendas are changing social norms by causing an ever-increasing inculcation of dependency on government. Horrendous increases in welfare state transfers to recipients of more than 14 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP is currently 17 trillion dollars). The point being that this year probably the majority of Americans will be on entitlement pay-outs. More than twice as many households will receive "anti-poverty" benefits than those receiving Social Security and Medicare. Food Stamp recipients rose from 19 million in 1983 to 51 million in 2012.
America's state of dependency is so prevalent Eberstadt says, "... the entitlement state is now the breadwinner of the household." That is the new culture replacing the history of self-sufficiency that made America the Beautiful the land of opportunity. The "Change you can believe in" on government programs under the guise of Social Justice has created economic chaos everywhere – Greece the most recent example. Their new national motto under the radical new president will become:
"Why work wasting my sweat?
Government handouts are easier to get."
So how do you help a country to self-destruct? Thomas Sowell, one of the country's most articulate observers of the government's role in wrong-headed programs, defined the real culprit that puts the wrong doctors in charge of the medicine described as Social Justice: "What do you call it when someone steals someone else's money secretly? Theft! What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery! What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice!" Amazing how the wrong medicine can create a climate of self-destruction. The pills of government-fix are an addiction that causes people's hands to go out, while they sing the new song of dependency in America, borrowed from our friends in Greece:
"Why work, wasting my sweat,
When the pills of government are so easy to get!"
