State of The Union

We all have our view of the American dream.  To our Founding Fathers, the dream was freedom and opportunity.  Today, the American dream for some is expressed in less conceptual, more materialistic terms, but the essence of the dream is still the same.  With freedom and opportunity comes the ability to achieve whatever one defines as success.  For some, personal success also provides opportunity for others to achieve their own version of the dream.  Success breeds success.

Sadly, the American dream is under attack.  Personal and business success has become anathema to those among us who would have us view wealth as something achieved through greed and exploitation.  The well publicized self-serving actions of a few have painted all who achieve success with a brush of evil.  The small businessman who started in his garage, now enjoys moderate success and employs 50 of his neighbors is lumped in with the bankers and auto executives testifying before Congress. 

According to President Obama, we have lived through an era when “a surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.”  Apparently the wealthy have been the sole beneficiaries of prosperity in our economy during the good times.  So during these most difficult of economic times, whether out of jealousy, envy or a very basic desire to find someone to blame for individual financial difficulties, it becomes easy to drop a blanket over the “rich”, lump them all together as evil and vilify the entire group.  Those who would have you buy this notion also would be the first to cry foul when someone maintains that the poor are all lazy.

There are those who take this simplistic view out of sheer ignorance – lemmings who blindly follow the liberal lead because it’s easy and, let’s face it, fun to blame others for their own shortcomings and failures, to get payback on those who have “used” them to achieve success.  There are others who espouse this view out of political ambition, who desire to promote class envy and even class warfare in order to further their own agenda by increasing their government-reliant voter base.  Those who prefer you not look behind the curtain, which would reveal that in many ways our federal government has driven us down this road to economic ruin.

We no longer teach personal responsibility, and our kids have been indoctrinated to think that in life there are no winners and losers, that we are all equal participants.  This does an incredible disservice to our children and our country, as life rarely gives out participation trophies.  Those who risk and sacrifice their own personal time, freedom and bank accounts deserve the outcome of that sacrifice, good or bad.  People willing to take risks generally are willing to share their rewards with those who helped, those who were active participants on the team.  But if they are forced to share their rewards with folks who simply sat in the stands, even those who cheered for a bad outcome, what incentive will exist to succeed?

Without these evil rich, these employers, inventors, thinkers, builders, these capitalists, America would not have become a nation to which others desire to immigrate for their chance at the dream, a superpower to which other nations look for leadership, guidance and support.  Even in the midst of one of the longest recessions in history, our economy is stronger and more resilient than most could even aspire to.  This success was not achieved by promoting mediocrity, but it is certain that if we, as a country, continue down a path of treating success and wealth as evil, mediocrity will be the best we can hope for.

As Dr. Adrian Rogers said, “”You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.”

Tags: John Galt

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.