Don’t MAKE US Come BACK THERE!
Tam had a very interesting post this morning:
Remember when you were little and you were whining to go to Disneyland or order a large pizza for supper or to get that shiny new toy, and your dad said “No, we can’t afford it.”
He said that because he was a grownup, and it was his job to be responsible.
We need a new political party in Washington, to get the checkbook away from the 537 people who have been kiting checks like a runaway teenager who boosted mom’s purse. Not the G.O.P., because they’re part of the problem.
We will call ourselves the G.U.P.: the GrownUp Party, and our motto will be “No we can’t!”
Chant it with me now:
“But all the other kids have ice cream and free universal health care!”
“No we can’t!”
RTWT.
Government has been incrementally taking on the responsibilities of our parents for decades, but only recently has it become too obvious to be ignored any longer. In 2005 when I wrote Tough History Coming, I quoted an Albuquerque Tribune piece by Jeffry Gardner entitled Save Us From Us. (The Trib is another paper that has failed, so the links are broken.) Here it is again, since it’s pertinent:
During the 1992 presidential debates, there was a moment of absurdity that so defied the laws of absurdity that even today when I recall it, I just shake my head.
It was during the town hall “debate” in Richmond, Va., between the first President Bush and contenders Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.
A grown man – a baby boomer – took the microphone from the moderator, Carol Simpson of ABC News, and said, in a fashion: You’re the president, so you’re like our father, and we’re your children.
See? My head’s shaking already. Where did that come from? Would a grown man have told a president something like that 100 years ago – or 50?
We’ve got our wires crossed, and our ability to accept responsibility for our lives – once so ingrained in our American nature that President Kennedy felt comfortable telling us to “ask not what your country can do for you” – has been short-circuited. We’ve slouched en masse into an almost-childlike outlook: You’re the president, so you’re like our father.
The fact that an adult – on national television, no less – would say this and later be interviewed as though he’d spoken some profound truth struck me then, as now, as more than a little absurd. It was alarming.
That attitude certainly hasn’t abated over the past 12 years. In fact, that helpless, innocent-child routine has crept into nearly all aspects of our culture.
At the top of this blog I have three quotes that are illustrative of the purpose for its existence. The third is from Kim du Toit:
I don’t just want gun rights… I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance….I want the whole bloody thing.
I’m not sure there are enough grown-ups left. What adults there are out there sure as hell aren’t in elected office. I’ll join the G.U.P., but I’m afraid we’ll have a smaller membership than the Greens. After all, we won’t be offering to “bribe the public with the public’s money.” Hard to compete with that when the electorate isn’t made up of grown-ups already.
Entropy wins.
