Dan said to David:
... Still, don't we have some responsibility to take care of ourselves? ...I
guess I don't understand this need to be taken care of. Maybe I've been taking
care of myself too long.
dmb says:
There is no doubt that self-reliance is a long-held American ideal. (Thanks to
Emerson.) But if we're talking about the man who is surrounded by flood waters
and trapped on his roof, I don't see how we can condemn him for just sitting
around waiting to be taken care of. And I don't think the ideal of
"self-reliance" can be used to deny the validity of FEMA, your local fire and
police departments and it doesn't mean we ought not buy flood insurance. I
mean, for some things it is just wildly inefficient and impractical not to act
collectively. But there is a corporately funded conservative meme out there
that tells us that government is bad and anyone who wants a government of, by
and for the people has some kind of character flaw. Remember the mythical
"welfare queen" who is supposedly living high on the hog, driving her Cadillac
to pick up her government check? This picture doesn't comport with reality. The
fact it, 80% of all the wealth created during my entire adult life ti
me has gone to the top 1%. Wealth has been moving out of the middle class and
into the pockets of the very wealth for 40 years now. At this point, the
richest 400 people have as much as the bottom 50%. Think about that for a
minute. 400 people have as much money as 150,000,000 people. And yet people
still believe it when they are told that teachers and fireman are making too
much! That's insane, don't you think?
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