American Entitlement: Who’s to Blame?

“The Revolution was affected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations ... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.” -John Adams

Today everyone is blaming everyone else for their problems. The Democrats blame Republicans for past failures; Republicans blame Democrats for current woes. Meanwhile, the rich blame the poor for taking too much welfare and the poor blame the rich for not sharing enough of the wealth. Let us put blame where it belongs once and for all.

Let us blame Republicans for taking advantage of our need to feel protected by enacting costly laws and creating new departments that tear away our freedoms and eat at the very soul of what makes us American.

Let us blame the Democrats for taking advantage of our need for justice by enacting new programs that take from the rich and give to the poor at an exuberant cost to our liberty and ability to govern ourselves.

Let us blame the rich for not showing generosity and goodwill on their own and for creating companies without hearts or common sense.

Let us blame the poor for believing that a handout is better than a hand-up and for not having enough faith in themselves to build their own success.

More importantly, let us blame ourselves for staying silent. Let us blame ourselves for embracing the idea that life is about the corporate ladder rather than about sticking together. Let us blame ourselves for teaching our children that divorce, giving up, giving in, pushing forward, compromising our values, forgetting God, and believing that in the end everyone wins is a good way to live.

The country that we now have in front of us was not created by evil men, conspirators, or schemers; it was created by you and me, one selfish lie at a time. Every day, we had opportunity to better ourselves, to serve our community or to help a stranger, but instead, we chose to ignore the needs and excuse ourselves by saying that we had our own problems to fix. Taking the high ground has become to mean that we have not stooped as low as those around us. We judge our efforts not on the effect they have on the world, but on the effect they have on ourselves. Our selfishness has created this country. The worst part of the whole story is that now we look around at what we have created and we beg those around us to fix it for us. We plead with our government, with our bosses, and with our neighbors, believing that if they tried just a little harder, if they did things just a little differently, our lives would be so much better.

The time has now come to stop looking to your right and to your left for a fix or blame. We are at a point where only looking out for one’s self is no longer the way to win the game. We must accept the fact that our fate lies within our ability to forget our selfish ways or our destiny will be to destroy ourselves one day at a time.