“I am not robbed by people who have more money than I. I am robbed by a government that wants to penalize my industry and give increasing portions of what I earn to people who do not emulate my principles, morals and ethics... We once taught our young people the virtues of hard work, saving, personal responsibility and accountability for one’s actions, chastity before and fidelity and commitment in marriage, honesty, integrity and virtue—not to mention the Ten Commandments (especially the one about not coveting that which belongs to your neighbor). We now teach them entitlement, victimhood, class envy and rights to other people’s money.”
— Cal Thomas
— Cal Thomas
posted by HeavyHanded at
6:20 PM
1 Comments:
We once taught our young people that the world is flat; that the devil takes shape and walks around in corporeal form; that hell was somewhere below the surface of the earth and heaven is above the sky; that the sun orbits the earth ... I think that point is adequately made -- just because we once thought something to be exclusively true doesn't mean that it is.
More importantly, you include in your list behavioral traits (I won't quibble, you can call them qualities) which have a general positive impact on the general welfare with other behavioral traits that, in and of themselves, have no necessarily conclusive, negative impact: Specifically, chastity makes sense from a moral perspective, but several thousand years of human history suggest that an alternative standard -- safe sexual practice -- more workable from a societal point of view (compare societies on this issue: STD's, unwanted preganancies).
"Thou shall have no other god's before me," we want to use that one? The one with a single God that is the maker and ruler of the entire universe, as vast as it could possibly be, this single God making it's Godself known through the writings of a very small number of recordations, all coincidentally from the same tribal group in the Middle East, said God pronouncing his particular favor on said tribal group to the exclusion of other tribal groups in competition for the same area, said Godself having defined himself to the writers in a fashion that would be understandable only in the context of the writers themselves (do we see each and every Hurricane as the wrath of God -- no, we have sufficient history to believe that Hurricanes are natural events.
Anyway, I'm with you on Personal Responsibility, even though we'd probably define that differently, Carl Thomas and I, but that's for another day.
"We now teach them entitlement, victimhood, class envy and rights to other people's money." What a "classist" statement. But let's be candid: Who are "they" that are taught victimhood? I didn't have it in my high school curriculum? Was it taught in Church? By the parents of "our young people?" And, did everyone learn this lesson? If not, how would you describe those who were taught this lesson? Dark? Foreign? Poor?
Yeah, great post. Almost as thoughtful as the comments to "Yahoo! News" articles.
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