From the Transcript Of Barack Obama's Wesleyan Commencement Address, May 25, 2008:
"Each of you will have the chance to make your own discovery in the years to come. And I say “chance” because you won’t have to take it.
There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy.
You can choose to narrow your concerns and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s.
But I hope you don’t. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, though you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, though you do have that debt.
It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation.
Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition.
Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story."
The Chapter where America switched to Communism.
What is the "American Dream" to you?
Is it the possibility that you can someday own a home?
A big car?
A nice suit, nice clothes?
Lesiure time? Recreation? Retirement?
Who do you expect to give you these things?
We in America have the highest across-the-board standard of living in the entire World. Our "poor" enjoy more living space, a better diet, and more creature comforts than even the "wealthy" in most countries.
A large percentage of America's "poor" have color televisions, cellular phones, cars...
Some of the very "poorest" Americans are fat. (At least by the standards of most of the world.)
I am not "poor".
I'm not "rich" either. Not by American standards. But I do live in a nice house with a pool and a whole acre of yard, a garage, and a sprinkler system, in a neighborhood of homes almost exactly like mine. (Except for the yard. Everyone on my block is envious of the amount of land that I live on...)
I drive an old pickup-truck, but my Wife has an almost new car.
But today I worked 15 hours. Yesterday, I worked 13. Tommorrow, I will work at least 12, maybe more. (Probably more.)
My Wife is working as I write this, clicking away on her lap-top, educating Florida's little skulls-full-of-mush on the finer points of Geometry, on-line. (It's ten after eleven PM. She's been at it, off and on, since seven this morning.)
Do you believe that she does this because she cares whether or not Florida's meat-head children understand Geometry?
Do you think that I work all of these hours, tired, sleepy, hot and sweaty in a rough-riding raggedy, slow company truck because I care whether or not Florida Rock runs out of #57 Gravel?
Are you crazy?
Is the "American Dream" the idea that everyone can be equal?
Only if you are a Marxist.
Let me explain something to you.
I make decent money. So does my Wife.
Neither of us could care less about "the poor". We believe that anyone else could do what we are doing, and live the way we live.
We both put in the work, and pay the price for our lifestyle. We do not expect "society" to subsidize our way of life.
And we don't feel any obligation to "those less fortunate," or any "debt to those who helped us get here", rather than to be successful, and to make "those who helped us get here" proud of our success.
Let me tell you what the "American Dream" is.
America is the place where I can make more money, buy more stuff, live better than you, if I apply myself more than you do.
That's it.
Competition is the engine that drives Entreprenuership, Industriousness, Ingenuity.
Equality is Stagnation.
If everyone has everything, then nothing is special.
My responsibility to my community is to provide an example of what hard work and self reliance can provide.
I do not owe one minute of my labor to anyone but my Wife and Child.
To tell me otherwise is to make me a slave to the "Collective".
And just what makes Mr. Obama think that I, or anyone else, will keep working as long and hard as we do, when everyone is equal, no matter what we do?
Keep your Marxism, Mr. Obama.
You, and your supporters obviously have no concept of what America is, or what made Her great.
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5 comments:
Tug, I agree with everything you say, with the exception of your statement that you could care less about the poor. We all should care about the poor and should do all we can to ease their suffering, however, caring about the poor should not include Government hand-outs. Welfare was intended to be a hand up, not a hand out. If we think we are helping the poor by giving them what they don't have to work for, we are only making the problem worse by creating in the poor an entitlement mentality, but of course, you already know that.
I did not mean for that to sound cold-hearted or cruel, Mark...
I care very deeply about the plight of the poor.
So deeply that I know that I can never help any of them by becoming one of them.
Neither can anyone else.
The only salvation that the poor can hope for is for there to be as many compassionate rich people as possible, and for Government to stay out of the way of wealth creation so that they can break the cycle of poverty and failure.
It is the only compassionate thing to do to help the poor.
Absolutely great post, tug.
I am compassionate for the poor only if it is throught no fault of their own (i.e.: disability of some kind). Otherwise, I say get an education and get out and work. Get on a budget and don't spend money you don't have.
My husband and I owe nothing except our mortgage - and it's because we live within our means, we are on a budget, and we tithe and God blesses. We're not rich, but we're not poot. Middle class is a pretty nice place to be except for being taxed to death!
You say some pretty shitty things about the poor. Nice Christian values there!
Go crawl back under your rock asshole.
I AM the poor, and I crawl out from under my rock every morning way before daylight, and go to work.
Saying that other poor people could, and should do the same is not attacking the poor.
It's telling the truth.
And if that offends you, then I'm sorry you stumbled across my Blog, because that's what I do here.
2 Thessalonians 3:10
For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.
There's Christian values for you.
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