I’m sitting in a restaurant looking across the street at the “Occupy” demonstrators camped-out on the mall of the Hennepin County building (sounds bourgeois doesn’t it?). The “why” behind these satellite demonstrations escapes me, as does the scattered messaging. Indeed, a recent New York Times front page photo collage displayed signs at a like-demonstration that ran the gamut of disenchantment, e.g., “Young, Educated, and Unemployed,” “Reform Corporate Welfare,” “End the Fed,” “Stop The Wars,” “9-11 Was an Inside Job,” and “I’m Very Upset.” None really appeared to make much sense, other than to register the age-old primal gripe with The Man.
One huge sign got my attention, and my goat: BAIL OUT THE POOR!, it demanded. I thought, really? Bail out the poor? This made about as much sense as the “9-11 Was an Inside Job” sign.
A pundit remarked a few years ago that America lies dormant in a “sensitivity coma,” a hyper-state in which “All God’s Children” qualify automatically for all manner of consideration, tolerance, and support, ranging from nursing home and health care subsidies to food stamps and unemployment checks, to waivers after breaking immigration laws to all manner of hand-outs and bail-outs. Free lunches for everyone.
This week David Brooks wrote, “While the cameras surround the flamboyant fringes, the rest of the country is on a different mission. Quietly and untelegenically, Americans are trying to repair their economic values.” I would submit that part of that repair should involve re-valuing our belief in the no-brainer of free enterprise, that is, hard work – bad breaks = better place. The poor can claim a lot of bad breaks, but how many went to and stayed in school, graduated, stayed away from having babies out of wedlock or getting arrested, learned to communicate in English, got a job, and then worked their asses off with intention, absorbing every word and watching every signal and cue from every boss, peer, and competitor? Had they been able to do so, they would have earned adequate resources to survive, maybe even becoming self-sufficient, if not downright comfortable.
I have no interest in bailing out the poor and neither should you. What the poor need are resources, education, and the will to attempt the struggle. Rather than bail them out, let’s equip them with the chance to succeed and then let them sink or swim in our survival-of-the-fittest world, like we all do. It begins and ends with education. Require it, enforce it. No exceptions. I promise the number of poor people will diminish and that dude with the sign will have lost a reason not to go find a job himself.
And those still looking for a bail-out? You can always keep yourself busy going to “Occupy” gatherings. The better alternative being a verse in Galatians that reminds us of a 2,000-year-old truism, you reap what you sow.
Incidentally, that’s particularly relevant for The Man.
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