Golf and Politics

A Surrogate Parent?

Several years ago during one of the candidate debates between Clinton and Bush, a reporter stood up and asked this question “Since the Government is like a surrogate parent, how are you going to ensure that the government helps us?” 
I nearly fell out of my chair.  What kind of mentality thinks that the government is a surrogate parent?  What kind of person wants that to be a reality and who in their right mind could think like that?  I was even more amazed that the candidates did not just laugh at this insipid remark but treated it as a true question.  They started talking about how the government could do more to take care of people in various ways.

I was aghast!  This is not the purview of government.  The Federal Government is not supposed to take care of anyone!  It is not the job of the government, any government, to do for you.  It is your job to do for you and those around you.  You would give up your responsibility to your self and your community to – The Government?  What comes to mind when you here someone say ‘I’m going to take care of you?’  if it’s the mob you might get a different impression than if it was your mother.  The government is more like the mob, if they say they will take care of you well, you had better run!

I left home because I wanted to be my own man and NOT live under the rules and direction of my parents.  Perhaps this person never left home?  Perhaps he was never expected to fend for himself, to provide for himself, expected to go forward and be a man.  I really thought that that mentality was an aberration, a unique and segregated instance.  Surely most people are proud of their ability to be independent, enjoy the freedom to develop their abilities and skills and direct them toward worthy goals?  We are a nation of over-comers, a people who believe in the sanctity of the individual and the power that individualism brings to bear when there is a community of individuals.  Each using their strengths where another may have a weakness, to complete the whole.  If you want someone to take care of you then go move back in with your mother!  (as if she’d have your lazy no good but back!)    What a far cry we have come from the time of John F Kennedy and “…Ask Not What your Country can do for you, but what you can do for your Country…”  That attitude and fortitude seems dead now. 

I thought at the time that the questioner was an isolated incident.  Obviously I was wrong.  I look around and today I see that what he was asking has become a call from every corner.  ‘ Take Care of Me, Do something for ME, Don’t expect me to take care of myself its too hard.’ Wah Wah Wah, have we become a nation of cry babies?  Expecting that we are owed something for living?  My mother did me a favor and it was hard on her at the time.  She needed me to be home to help out but when I turned 18 she pointed at the door and said good luck and don’t let it hit you in the but on the way out!  It is time for you to stand on your own you can do it, I did my best to get you started now its up to you.  I was out the door!  It took me several years to know how hard it was for her to do that but she told me that “I raised you to be a Man not a boy and I expected you to be a Man” well thank you very much Mom.  But now I can turn to the government to take care of me.  You needn’t have tried so hard to give me backbone and fortitude to keep going when it got tough.  You did not need to teach me that Success is only won after you have failed so often that you want to give up.  It is to the one who gets up again after being fully face down for the hundredth time that is the valiant that wins success.  The government can’t take care of you, it can only take from you.  Beware!  Beware! 

I have enjoyed the book Atlas Shrugged several times but now this year I am afraid.  It seems that it has come to pass what Ayn Rand warned about in the 40’s is more true today than even then.  When people think they get a job because they need it and government forces employers to hire and pay people for work not done.  We are near the end of the great experiment known as the United States of America.  Read the book again and see the similarities, only there is no island for us to escape to this time.  Then go review my earlier post ‘Why do you get a Job’

Mark Cotter Political Thought