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What I neglected to say
on the radio
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Posted: September 28, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
Recently, I appeared on a San Francisco radio talk show. I had looked
forward to discussing a wide range of topics with the host and his
callers. That's why I had e-mailed a score of my essays to his producer.
But I guess nobody bothered to read any of them. Instead, because the
host simply introduced me as the author of "Conservatives Are From Mars,
Liberals Are From San Francisco," virtually every caller for the entire
hour wanted to know what I meant by conservative as opposed to
Republican, and wondered why I insisted that, on most matters, I
actually regard myself as a libertarian. Long before the hour was over,
thanks to a notoriously low boredom threshold, my eyes had rolled back
into my skull and I was gasping for oxygen.
Still, I blame myself for giving incomplete answers to a few of the
questions. For instance, I claimed that whereas most people have come to
expect the federal government to pay for everything, I feel that the
feds should be limited pretty much to waging war and guarding our
borders. When I was asked why I felt that way, I don't even recall what
I replied. But what I should have said was that I am not an anarchist
who is opposed to all forms of government, but the more localized
government is, the more accountable it is to the people. For instance,
it's fairly easy to remove incompetent mayors and corrupt councilmen,
but go try to get rid of Ted Kennedy or Patrick Leahy.
When asked if I really believed that if the federal government weren't
taxing us to death people would actually take up the slack and give more
to charity, I said people definitely would. But I should have gone
further. I should have pointed out that, long before there was an income
tax, Andrew Carnegie, a personal hero of mine, single-handedly created
the public library system in America. Or I could have said that when I
was earning good money in TV, I would pay for my mother-in-law to come
out for annual visits from Nebraska. But when the jobs dried up, I no
longer was able to fly her to L.A. It only stands to reason that the
more money people have, the more generous they can afford to be.
Furthermore, it makes no sense to send our money to Washington, D.C.,
just so the politicians can dole it out as they see fit. For one thing,
regular charity groups do a better job of it. Most of the money donated
to legitimate charities goes to do what the donors intended. But a huge
chunk of the money we send to Uncle Sam is skimmed off to finance
bloated federal bureaucracies. When a charity behaves that way, the
executive director either ends up being fired or in the poky.
When Americans are flush, they're the most generous people on earth.
Look at the flood of dollars they sent to the survivors of 9-11 even
though many of those people were already collecting on life insurance
policies. Better yet, think of all the money we kicked in after the
tsunami hit a part of the world where many, if not most, of the people
who were victimized were Islamics who despise America! And of course, in
the wake of Katrina, people all over the country are breaking open their
piggy banks.
I'm afraid that too many of us have been bamboozled into buying into the
notion that the folks in Washington should be encouraged in their
attempts at social engineering. It shocks and saddens me that so many
Americans see nothing wrong with the federal government encroaching into
every area of our lives. For my part, I don't want the feds doling out
small business loans, overseeing our schools, ruling on abortions, and I
certainly don't want five idiots on the Supreme Court deciding that
eminent domain gives the government carte blanche to confiscate our
homes and businesses.
Understand, it has nothing to do with whether or not I agree with what
the feds are doing, either. If it's wrong when I disagree with their
behavior, it's no less wrong when I happen to be in agreement. It has to
do with the sort of country this is supposed to be. If I wanted
socialism, I would vote for socialists.
One of my callers, by the way, said she was all for a socialistic
government. I asked her why she thought that would be a good thing. She
replied that people who had more would then have to share with people
who had less. I said that I, along with the majority of people I knew,
were in favor of sharing, but once it stopped being done on a voluntary
basis, it was no longer sharing; it was communism.
Frankly, I'm afraid that's where we're headed. I suppose it began back
in the '30s when Roosevelt and Congress got together and created that
alphabet soup of federal agencies. Ever since, Americans have grown more
and more accustomed to Washington's usurping individual responsibility.
As a result, we have become a nation of brats. We whine when the price
of gas goes up and accept it as our birthright when it goes down. It's
as if we think we have a sacred right to pay the same price for fuel as
our ancestors. In the meantime, without a squawk, we pay an arm and a
leg for bottled water, $3.50 for a box of movie theatre popcorn, and of
course we keep right on buying cars the size of Sherman tanks.
Like teenagers, we expect Uncle Sam to pay for all the essentials, such
as health care and housing, while we blithely blow our allowances on
such pricey toys as over-sized TVs and cable service, cell phones, DVD
players, Nintendo games, and $125 sneakers for the kids.
We even have the attention span of children. We get into a war and
immediately demand to know when it will be over – like little kids in
the backseat incessantly asking if we're there yet. Can you imagine
anybody inquiring of FDR, in 1943, if he had a timetable for withdrawing
from North Africa or Italy or Corregidor?
When a caller wanted me to explain how, without federal assistance, New
Orleans could be expected to cope in the aftermath of Katrina, I said
that catastrophic insurance might have helped. Or perhaps if the state
or city had built stronger levees, the entire tragedy could have been
avoided. In any case, other cities have managed to rebuild without the
federal government staking out ever more turf. Chicago managed to come
back from a holocaust, and San Francisco recovered nicely from its
earthquake. I am for relying on private enterprise and the generosity of
individual Americans. After all, the only money the feds have is what it
takes from us. It's not as if George Bush is writing a personal check on
his Crawford account.
Honestly, I don't know how our parents and grandparents, members of what
has correctly been labeled the Greatest Generation for the gallant way
they dealt with the Depression and World War II, can stomach us. They
have us over for Thanksgiving, and we're bigger turkeys than the bird in
the oven.
That's what I should have said.
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