Two Roads
Normal
0
false
false
false
MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
There are two ways in which to
better your lot in life. One is to build yourself up. The other is to bring
others down. We have all experienced people that have chosen one approach or
the other. We all know someone who is always blaming someone else or pointing
out everyone’s faults, and that someone appears to feel better about themselves
by bringing down the competition. You probably also know someone who always
sees good in others and just seems to focus on how they can work on themselves
through acts of self improvement. I point this out to ask you which kind of
person you would like to be or to be seen as? The personality that brings
others down as a means to their own success is obviously not very appealing,
but one has to admit that it is essentially a self defense mechanism for those
that feel unable to feel good about themselves in any other way.
But let’s move beyond basic human
interaction and on to how this may correlate to political theory. The
government, in theory, exists for the purpose of, among other things, the
betterment of its citizens. How it performs this duty is the basic divide
between conservative and liberal thinking. Now, of course, there are many
issues that differentiate between the left and the right but the fundamental
principals reflect a choice between individual liberties versus an equal
distribution among all. So far, both ideas sound pretty good on their own. I
will not try to claim that liberals do not value individual freedoms, nor will
I listen to the idea that somehow conservatives don’t care about the little
guy. American’s are mostly up the middle and would like to see a balance of
both choices. But how do we achieve this? This brings us back to the two paths
to success.
Do we achieve a greater success by
punishing those that at the front of the line and redistribute the wealth to
all. Sure it sounds great if you’re at the back of the line because you just
took the fast track to the front on someone else’s shoulders! But what does
that do to the motivation of anyone in the middle of the line? I heard an
example once where a teacher decides to “redistribute” some points on her
scoring system for her student’s papers. She would simply take some points off
from the A students and raise the scores of the D students, accordingly. She figured that this would improve the self
esteem of the students who were at the bottom of the class. You can understand
her good intentions in helping the less fortunate in her class, but as is the
case with the classic liberal view in politics, it just doesn’t add up. By
trying to take from one to give from another, you hurt all those involved. You
take away the incentive to work hard for those who do. You also very subtly
take away the motivation for the less fortunate by addicting them to their
subsidy.
Listen, I can appreciate the
concern that our society not allow a great divide between the rich and the
poor. Equal opportunity must be assured for all. I simply have heard enough of
the anti-corporate mentality that is running wild in the aftermath of the Wall
Street meltdown. Tax the Rich! Give to the poor! Well, what happens when it is
no longer profitable to run a business in the US anymore? It is those very
corporations that employ the lower classes that we are supposed to be helping.
Won’t we feel smart when big business shuts down or moves overseas?
There’s an old expression that you
can give a man a fish and he will eat today. Teach a man to fish and he will
eat for a lifetime. What do you want your government to do?