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Abdicating Responsibility 043:
By Willie Gaffer:
June 5, 2006:
The attempt to abdicate and make other people responsible has become an epidemic in our culture. We go over and over this one. Nothing changes. How many times am I going to have to say this? There has been a massive abdication of responsibility in America. The most common phrase in our entire country is, "They ought to," or, "They should." You hear it everywhere. The they we are usually speaking about is the government. Sometimes it's the state government, but usually it's the federal government. We want the government to do everything. We want the government to be responsible for everything. No one says, "I should," or, "we should," anymore.
We even have some complaining moron parents group who want to have legislation to stop advertisers from advertising to children. It's all about non nutritional food items, like candy. It's another case of parents wanting to abdicate their responsibility and transfer it to government. The kids don't buy the candy, the parents do. Children's nutrition is the responsibility of their parents, not their government. People who abdicate their own responsibility have no right to complain about anything.
George Bush and the Federal establishment wield enormous power because everyone below the federal level has abdicated responsibility. This includes all of the state governors that I know of. Listen to Granholm, "We have to get the Federal government to step up." All governors talk like that. Instead of taking the imitative, they gather round the public trough begging for handouts from the fed. So the fed taxes us, returns $0.50 or less for every dollar they take in, and everyone is wondering why our economy doesn't work anymore.
Mayors do the same thing. They have two doors to beg from. The mayor of Flint can beg from Granholm. If that does not work, he can go to the fed. No one is even ashamed of their public panhandling. Governors and Mayors maintain a straight faced indignant posture as they demand more and more in handouts from the federal government.
New Orleans is a classic example. The destruction of New Orleans was a disaster that never should have happened. It happened because of the inability of the city, state, and federal governments to act in a cooperative manner. Through a cooperative effort, that city could easily have been made invulnerable to hurricanes. There was no law that prevented our enemies in governmental authority from cooperating. It was petty politics, nothing more.
What happened was massive abdication of responsibility across the board and they are still doing it. The levies should have been better built. Everyone says the other guy should have done that. The fed should have done it, the city should have done it, the state should have done it, but nobody did it and the city was destroyed. Where was the little Dutch boy and his finger? All of these leaders had fingers too, but they must have been in their butts. One finger in your butt, one finger in your mouth and switch once in a while just for flavor.
We are rebuilding Iraq, but we are not rebuilding New Orleans. Say what? George says rebuilding Iraq is giving Iraqis hope for a better life. How about the poor people who were evacuated to Texas after Katrina? Would it not be nice if they had hope for a better life? How much would it take to rebuild New Orleans? What percent of the money we have urinated away in Iraq would it take?
The real tragedy of all of this is the disaster of New Orleans could and probably will happen again and again in other places. We are vulnerable to natural disasters and to terrorist attacks all over America. We are vulnerable in hundreds of places and all of the big shots are saying someone else ought to do something about it. The fed has accumulated all of the power, but it has lost the ability to act. It is a musclebound monster unable to tie its own shoes. The fed's only tools for action have become coercion and bribery. They threaten the local establishment, then bribe them to do what they should be doing anyway. They use these tools everywhere and especially in education.
George get's his, "No Child Left Behind," stuff going, then he uses the money to coerce and bribe the schools into doing it his way. Meanwhile, the states and school boards cry and whine for more of the bribery money. They will do whatever it takes so long as the fed pours the money in. It's not about education after all, it's about pay and image and bureaucracy run amok. It is especially about abdication.
As I have said many times, when it comes down to cases it's
about citizen responsibility. It the citizens were honest, dishonest
government would be impossible. A politician who abdicated his
responsibility would be an out of work politician. That does not
happen because the citizens have abdicated. The citizens were
first to do it. Government merely followed the lead. The bottom
line is obvious. If you want good government, get off your butt
and be a good citizen. I honestly don't expect that to happen
in my lifetime. Maybe in a million years, if we survive. It don't
look hopeful. I frankly thing the Muslims will destroy us and
then China will destroy the Muslims. Confucianism will finally
come into its own and we will all be coolies.
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