GIVING OR GIVING BACK
There is an important difference between “Giving” and “Giving Back,” and it is the same difference found between “Charity” and “Redistribution of Wealth.”
GET A JOB
According to The Hill.com, the Senate failed to pass an extension of the Federal Unemployment Benefits. Intended to help stimulate the economy and help those who were affected by the earliest impacts of the Recession, these benefits were not expected to last forever, so it’s really no surprise that they weren’t extended today…except by the people who have been receiving them.
THE PERILS OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
As I’ve explained before, the First Principle of Conservatism is PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, the simple concept that I am free to make my own choices, and, therefore, must face the consequences of those choices. I stepped in a hole in a grassy median. Nobody made me walk through the grass. I could have gone around through the parking lot and stayed on the flat pavement. It was MY CHOICE, and, because I didn’t watch where I was stepping, I got hurt.
RESTORING HONOR
Yesterday’s “Restoring Honor” Rally held by Glenn Beck at the Washington Mall gathered “thousands” of supporters (try hundreds of thousands, according to the estimated capacity of the areas literally filled with people) who stood together in support of a restoration of honor and faith in America by Americans. There was a strong religious overtone to the entire ceremony, and absolutely zero politics. And on the 47th Anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., there were references of Dr. King’s vision of Racial Equality and Individual Responsibility embedded in the words of almost every speaker and every topic shared, with heavy emphasis to the part so often omitted by those who quote Dr. King’s speech: “the CONTENT OF THEIR CHARACTER.”
PRINCIPLE #1: PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
The First Principle of Conservatism is PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Sounds simple, right? Take responsibility for yourself and your family. Provide for your OWN needs. Do the hard work FOR YOURSELF rather than counting on someone else to do it for you. While that might seem like a reasonable definition, it is clearly incomplete.
SIX CENTS
One of the first thing that my father did when we moved to Florida was to change the old fuse panel in our house to electrical breakers. At the time, breakers weren’t exactly commonplace in the houses built in the 1950’s, but they were certainly safer than the old screw-in fuses that had been in place. To keep the fuse from popping and having to be replaced all the time, people would put pennies behind the fuse to maintain the circuit, thereby bypassing the fuse and creating a significant fire hazard. I’ll never forget when he was pulling our panel out of the wall, and removed a batch of pennies that had literally been fused together. As I recall, there were six of them, but I could be wrong. After all, I was maybe 8 years old at the time. But that cluster of pennies, fused together as they were, taught me a lesson: Some people will do things to avoid doing the hard work of doing the RIGHT thing, even if it puts them at risk.
