This ever-growing paranoia about America becoming some kind of “Socialist” country that is being bandied about by some on the Kook Fringes of Far Right-ism seems to be gaining some traction with people who either don’t know any better or who are willing to be led by the nose rather than get off their duffs and sniff out truth for themselves.
I guess that is what happens when a People Population becomes too comfortable. They get lazy and they relax their vigilance and the nut whacks find a way to crawl under the tent and start trying to run the whole show.
When this is allowed to happen, the happy situation that was once Freedom and Independence soon is in danger of becoming one of subservience to new masters – - – in the case of The United States, very rich and very greedy masters… people who would possess all the good of the land – - – their own rightful share and the shares of everyone else as well.
So, for right now, I am focusing on the oft-repeated idea (Usually from someone on The Extremest Right) that America is this wonderful magical place where the individual is as free as a bird to do whatever they wish to do and to work hard and achieve just as much under their own steam as they can achieve and live happily after without owing anything at all to either The Government or the Society at large.
I call this attitude “Take all and return nothing.” In my view an attitude such as this one is kind of like a farmer who plows and plants the same piece of land over and over and who never let’s the land rest and never spends a nickle for fertilizer to replenish the soil. In little time at all, the farmer who acts like this finds that he has nothing left but fallow, untillable land that will grow nothing at all.
That kind of defines a lot of the unfortunate and uninformed Far Radical Extreme Righties as far as I am concerned. Many of them seem to be like big fat cockroaches who always complain that someone has kept the kitchen cabinet doors closed so they cannot crawl in and devour and contaminate every thing in sight without ever having to worry about any kind of consequences.
First of all, folks – - – according to the way I was raised, that kind of thinking is not “American” to begin with.
The America that I was taught to love, respect, revere and serve is a place where everyone is concerned about the welfare of everyone else and when someone gets in over their head all the Real Americans come running to their aid.
I would like to have someone who believes this Right Wing Extremest crapola about super independence and the lack of need for anything but self reliance to cause personal success tell me how it would work in real life?
Someone wants to start a small business so instead of going to a bank and asking for a loan, they break their piggy banks and voila! Immediately they have saved every penny they need to rent the space, buy the equipment, hire and pay employees, buy the advertising, pay the electric bill, purchase supplies for the business, etc., etc., etc., – - – and all this is to be done from personal savings or loans from family and friends?
Some of the Fringe Cases in Nut Land brag that they can get through life without any kind of socialized medicine or government assistance with health care or insurance or prescriptions or major operations or long hospital confinements and all the rest that goes with it?
So, am I to understand that this kind of person actually believes that they can be healed of all their physical ailments by willing relatives, by personal will power and a few little home remedy witch’s brews that someone might concoct for their ailments?
Hogwash!
Now along comes some other refugee from Wing Nuttia trying to tell me that a nation of like-minded individuals united in a common cause does not represent any kind of legitimate collective mentality but that everyone within the fabric of the social order ought to be pulling in their own direction regardless of the effect it might have on everyone else.
Again I say, “Poppycock!”
A situation like the one I just described is kind of like what the obstructionist intransigents on the Far Right Fringe have already begun to act out for America and as far as I can tell (So far) it has done nothing but divide the country and weaken Her because the government is stagnated through obstinacy of a stubborn few extremists and nothing positive or productive can get done.
For those who may have already forgotten what day it is, let me suggest that no individual has the power nor the resources to make it on his or her own in modern Society and that we are all a part of the environment that spawned us and that the environment that spawned us in the case of The United States exists within the boundaries of a nation of Laws designed to advance the good of all.
Anyone who attempts to live outside the boundaries of those parameters and who still dares to claim to be “American” is either a foreigner or a law breaker – - – is either alien to Americanism or is trying to remove from the general responsibility of each of us to contribute to the support of the nation – - - a responsibility that millions have willfully accepted ever since the Founding either through their ingenuity, their industry or the blood they have shed in defense of the ideals.
The term, “No man (woman)(Person) is an island” applies to Americans with great intensity and passion. We are truly all in this thing together and I think we should recapture the art of working together for the common good rather than trying to find ways to scrap the Democratic Republic and to run off into some personal cocoon somewhere.
Posted by John Liming as part of his continuing Diaries of Political Opinion, Viewpoints and Insights.
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