Recently someone e-mailed me an analytical “story,” if you will, about how pigs are led to slaughter in a very methodical manner. Little by little they are given free corn to feed on from the ground, and little by little, as they grow more accustomed to the corn lying on the ground, a pen is built around them until the last day when the pen is finished and the gate imprisoning them is slammed shut. Even then, as the little pigs protest with their whinnies and snorts, eventually they become preoccupied with the corn lying on the ground and retreat to their feeding frenzy.
The e-mailer continues to say the following:
“The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc., while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time.
One should always remember two truths:
There is no such thing as a free lunch, and you can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.”
The e-mailer who sent this feels “all the wonderful help” is a major problem for the future of democracy –especially as he has known in his lifetime and for the majority of “baby boomers” who presumably will live another 25 to 30 years.
What I’d like to know is, how do YOU feel? Do you believe the government is luring the majority of Americans down a primrose path to socialism or communism, and etching away basic freedoms enjoyed and taken for granted by most Americans for the last two-hundred plus years by offering more government sustained programs for people who cannot afford decent housing; paid daycare for the single parent with children; food vouchers and extra cheese and milk with WIC programs or offering free breakfast and lunch programs to parents who cannot afford full lunch prices for their children?
And what of the generations of “average” Americans who have retired on Social Security or been healed when injured or sick by Medicare after they have retired? Are these not also a form of “governmentally subsidized” programs?
Do we discount Corporate America? Have the giants of Wall Street not prospered by the tax deductions and off-shore accounts, and transferred companies and jobs to other countries in the name of cutting their taxes and benefitting their investors and themselves, while simultaneously ending middle- management careers and jobs in the United States for American workers?
We have hundreds of thousands of workers who are not allowed to strike in this country—for any reason; among them are the military, police officers, and farmers, without all of whom this country could not function at all. Yet in many regions of the United States these are some of the least valued and certainly poorest paid in the country! However, the e-mailer who sent me his feelings about how the United States is trekking a fast trot toward socialism feels there should be no subsidies for farmers who have CRP land, or for dairy farmers who face the never-ending battle of the always moving market for their product, rising fuel prices for trucking their milk and just bad years in general. Many feel farmers “ask” for the debt they incur due to buying the equipment they need to compete and continue to produce the amount of food they do. It comes down to corporate food growers who use hormones to fatten the pigs and cows and hens and turkeys we eat or farmer Joe who believes a fifteen-pound turkey is plenty big for an average family gathering at Thanksgiving. Which would you prefer?
My question is this: how do we backtrack? How do we stop subsidizing, enabling, paying for those who cannot or will not pay their own way? The poor will still get sick and the hospitals will still care for them. Young, inexperienced and undereducated girls will still get pregnant and have babies who will need society’s help in feeding and educating those children with hopes of breaking the cycle. The rich will continue to prosper by the labor of the far less wealthy. And the masses of the far less wealthy will continue to do the best they can to reach their goals. This is America and that’s what we believe is possible.
Have our values changed in two hundred years? Have our basic rights and freedoms been taken away?
That only each person can answer for him or herself. And the only thing any one of us can do is work to make it better. What’s your plan?
CONGRATULATIONS, CAMERON MEEK! For your 2-minute film “Not One of Us (Different is Weird)” that has been awarded Third Place at the FM Access Film Festival and will screen on the official screening date of Sunday, April 1st at 8:00 p.m. on Moorhead Access Channel 99. If you miss the screening, Cameron’s film can also be uploaded to Moorhead’s YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/MoorheadAccess) at various times throughout the next month.
PAY-ATTENTION-TO’S
This is a reminder about the monthly Adult Connect Support Group for those over 18 living with epilepsy/seizures, for a change in meeting location just for this month. Please check out the details:
Date: Monday, April 2nd; Time: 6-8PM; Location: The Spirit Room @ 111Broadway in downtown Fargo.
The Plan: 6:30-7:30 Yoga/Relaxation Techniques with Dawn, Yoga Instructor (wear loose comfortable clothing); 7:30-8:00 PM Wrap up/Wind Down/See Art Exhibit
RSVP TO AMY HAUGEN BY MONDAY: ahaugen@efmn.org, or please call Amy: 701-429-1165
All questions, comments for Soo Asheim can be emailed to: sooasheim@aol.com or call 233-8604.