Throughout the first 200-plus years of America the
government was an impartial part of everyone’s life: it allowed people to
succeed or fail by their own talents and in keeping with the “content of their
character” as Martin Luther King expressed it. And under this philosophy our
nation became the wealthiest, happiest and most liberated nation the world has
ever seen. Then in the 1960s the federal government realized that the civil
rights of a portion of our population was being denied and passed legislation
that finally ended the discrimination.
Politicians liked the way the passing of this
legislation made them feel and they enjoyed the pleasant feedback they received
for passing the legislation that corrected past injustices, and then began a
series of attempts by politicians to discover new “needs” of the people (like
the “need” for an Obamaphone and the “need” for cable TV) and they attempted to
uncover some mistreatment being meted out to sections of the population which
the politician could then add to the list of goodies he/she could be praised
for providing. This also extended to the area of making certain that no one
failed any more, that no one felt oppressed and that no one was “offended” by
the words of their fellow citizens, even when these words were only passively displayed
(as in praying silently or singing America’s national anthem).
An example of a current “need” recently discovered by
liberal/progressive/Democrat Bernie Sanders is the “need” for every American to
attend college for free. Never mind that not all Americans want to or need to attend
college and that traditionally college only served those who wanted to join
highly trained professions in which the eventual high salary could justify the
high cost of getting the education. And
also never mind that there are not enough colleges and class rooms to
accommodate all young people who are being promised the free education. Too
many young people would take advantage of, and possibly abuse, this offer of a newly
identified “need” and spend four years wasting their time at the taxpayers’ expense
taking junk classes for which there is no private job available, following
graduation. And how likely is it that a nineteen year-old is going to take an
education seriously when it costs him/her nothing? In addition, it’s likely
that students taking these free courses will be given a diploma without having
had to study and make decent grades (Bernie promises a free education but says
nothing about making the attendee work to earn the diploma).
An enormous problem this new “need” generates, is that
the cost will without doubt come to rest heavily on the middle class and will
be drawn from them in the form of new taxes. The injustice is that the middle
class attend college at a lower rate than the upper classes and they need a
college education much less for the professional work they do (beauticians,
electricians, plumbers, truck drivers, etc.). So the middle class will be
subsidizing the education of the higher classes. And the taxes that will be demanded
of the middle classes will never end because the young people in “need” of
education will never end.
All of the suffering of the middle class to pay this
new, enormous, never-ending tax will do no good considering the miserable state
of our economy under the Obama administration, and all of the suffering is only
intended to make liberal/progressive/Democrat politicians look good and get the
vote of the recipients of the free stuff. The ability of government to find new
things that people “need” and that only government can provide for them is
without end, and is only just beginning.
