Walking to Work After a Car Wreck

I really did stay away from the news over the Easter weekend. I had one of the Sunday shows on, but I pretty much ignored it. Except for one commerical. The AARP (liberal senile citizen lobby) has a commercial out where a woman gets into a car accident, then walks to her job as a waitress and starts working. After mulling it over, and checking out their website, I figured out why I found the commercial so damned annoying.

First of all, let me provide a little historical perspective. Back when this great nation was but a vast wilderness, many people spread out to tame the land. They traveled by wagon and by horse, and when those modes of transportation were lost, by foot, to get where they needed to go. If they fell off a cliff, twisted an ankle, or got chewed up by a grizzly bear, they did not have access to health care. They patched themselves up as best they could and crawled back to civilization, or they died. And if they didn't get one of the definitely fatal diseases and snuff it, they worked until they died, because there was no maternal government that would take care of them. They either eked out their survival or they didn't survive.

Fast forward to today. While I don't necessarily advocate returning to that age entirely (especially not for the global warming goofs), it does show how dependent we have become on the nanny state. The senile lobby wants, in essence, to have our health care and retirement taken care of by the government. This mentality has been growing since the Great Depression, and will continue until either we are all attached to the government tit, or we are able to break this mindless dependency cycle.

To clarify. I expect to work when I am physically able, sick or otherwise , until I die. I am not expecting Social Security. And if I don't have enough in retirement accounts, I'll continue working. And even if I do, I'll still work. When my parents get too old, my sisters and I will take care of them until they die. And I expect my children to do the same, as I do their children.

There, of course, will be exceptions, and a safety net put in place by the governments (state and federal) would not be wholly inappropriate. But it is this expectation that the solution is more government that degrades us as people.

I will agree with one point that they make though. (It's been a while) They mentioned encouraging people to save. And the best way to do that is: (ding ding ding) the FairTax.

The best way to make it in this world has always been, and will always be, to make it on your own terms. Self-reliance doesn't mean you never need help. But it does need a government that values freedom over security.