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USA Edition | Today Is Friday, March 12, 2010 |
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Benjamin Franklin -- Man Of Thrift, Ideas and Practicality
When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
Benjamin Franklin
Washington
Doing What’s Easy In Preference To Doing What’s Required
In February 2010, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey discovered that 86% percent of those questioned believe that the American system of government is broken. What might have been even more remarkable is that 14% thought their national government wasn’t broken.
The American’s Creed
I deserve my government goodies.
I see no reason you should receive any government goodies.
In any event I don’t expect or agree to pay for anyone’s goodies — not even mine.
You hear it every day. America has changed. Congress is a disaster zone. For many Americans, The White House, no matter its occupant, or party, doesn’t seem to listen either. Government obfuscates, dissembles, conceals and spends – no matter party, agency or branch.
Washington Is Broken
For most Americans, the CNN/Opinion Research poll confirms, there’s a widespread sense nothing gets done in Washington. And that which does get done is wrong, ineffective, or has so many earmarks attached that it serves only special interests at the expense of ordinary Americans.
To some degree, our sense of a government disconnected from the nation it governs is a tangible result of changes in our personal engagement, attitudes, political motivations, educational laxity and ignorance. While we decry how Washington has changed, as it most certainly has, we overlook how we have changed. How we as individual citizens have largely disconnected from our own responsibilities.
From Personal Responsibility To Entitlement
Being sub optimal comes about when we fail to do what is required in favor of some easier or lesser option.
In a world where pervasive attitudes of whatever are assumed to be the equal of what’s optimal, legitimate needs are met with weak, ineffective or inappropriate solutions.
We didn’t knowingly choose to turn America the Beautiful into America the suboptimal — we did so by turning away from traditional American values of thrift, personal responsibility, burden sharing, honesty and integrity. In the doing, the American Creed laid out by 14 generations of Americans, and exemplified in the words and deeds of Benjamin Franklin, has evolved from personal responsibility to one of entitlement.
Our 21st century attitudes on entitlement, what some call the American Creed, are the opposite of those for which we went to war to secure our independence. It is we, not Washington, who have turned America The Beautiful into America the sub optimal. While it is true that Washington is at the center of our national malaise, it is we who sent them, and a series of presidents beholden to the few, rather than the many.
When Whatever Replaces Optimal
In our lust to garner personal wealth for ourselves, while contributing little or nothing to creating that wealth, we transformed what was once the world’s most optimal nation into a place where sub-optimal is increasingly acceptable — and sometimes preferred. While the easy solution has supplanted the optimal in nearly all areas of American life, it has become the singular outcome in Washington.
Our nation became the most successful and powerful on Earth by nearly always coming together to choose and implement the optimal solution. Yet those young Americans just now coming of age to vote never knew that America for their reality is limited to the politics of extreme driven by big media, big money and big mouths.
Next time we blame the mess on Washington, best we consider our role in making it that way.