By Scott Tibbs, December 6, 2012
Last week, I tweeted a picture that is a good summary of where we are, where we are headed, and what we must reverse. The Greatest Generation fought back the Axis Powers and their ideologies of Nazism, Fascism and Militarism. The Grift Generation wants government to force other people to pay for their stuff.
The contraception mandate row that took up so much of the 2012 election is but one example of this. The Leftist position is this - if a woman's employer (or the government) does not provide contraceptives "free" of charge, they are denying her right to use contraception. The fact that a woman is perfectly free to pay for it herself does not even enter into the equation - by not providing it for her, you are oppressing her.
Sandra Fluke is the poster child for the entitlement mentality. She demands that other people pay for what she wants, and whines to Congress that she is being "oppressed" if she is not given what she wants. We see this now in debates over entitlement reform. If we do not forcibly take money from other people (or borrow trillions of dollars) and give it to the poor, we are oppressing the poor. Previous generations would consider it oppression if we actively exploited the poor, but the entitlement generation thinks we are oppressing the poor by giving them less.
In fact, this is what ObamaCare is all about in the first place: a massive new government program to ensure that someone else pays for our health care. Of course, that "someone else" will eventually be all of us together through our taxes. The men who founded this nation based on liberty from an oppressive government would be shocked and appalled by this federal overreach.
People vote based on this. The "ObamaPhone lady" video has been watched over seven million times and re-posted all over the web. (Yes, I know the story of the ObamaPhone - that it is an extension of land line service for the poor and that the program was started under George W. Bush. Save it.) The point is not the origin of the ObamaPhone. The point is that people are voting for President based on what they think they can get from the government.
This is a mentality we have to break. There will always be people who feel entitled to get things from other people, but it has reached the point that it is destroying our country. We simply cannot afford to continue down this path. For the last four years, we have had annual budget deficits of well over $1 trillion. Prior to 2009 (the year Barack Obama took office) our annual budget deficit had not even reached $500 billion. We're lurching toward financial disaster and the collapse of our economy. We have to make hard choices and make deep cuts if we expect our nation to survive.
