On Saturday October 9, 2010 Mr. Chuck Meny wrote a letter to the editor of the Evansville Courier damning every wealthy and powerful culture that the world has ever produced. I was astonished at the depth of envy that he expressed. His letter is the manifesto of a true communist with a heart full of envy. The spirit of progress however is not served by damning anyone, the rich included.
Let me preface my comments by disclosing that I am a descendant of the Cherokee nation, of immigrants, of William Wallace of Scotland, and am a direct descendant of Benjamin Harrison making me a cousin of 7 signers of the Declaration of Independence including Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. Jefferson’s lifestyle pretty much gives me relatives of every color and creed on earth. I am an American.
What have the rich done for me? Evansville Mayor Benjamin Bosse walked door to door collecting funds to supplement funds from the RICH to bring a college to Evansville that is now the University of Evansville. UE is here because of the philanthropic efforts of the RICH. I was able to attend UE largely on the strength of scholarships that were made possible by RICH corporations like Alcoa. Funding my BS with facilities and scholarships is what the RICH did for me.
I attended graduate school at Stanford University; a college was founded with the private donations of Jane Lathrop Stanford to memorialize her son Leland Stanford Jr. who passed away at a young age. My diploma bears his name. My lab partner was Leslie Leland, the founder of Stanford’s great niece. We both were on scholarships along with classmate Condoleeza Rice. The Stanford family’s wealth came from the railroad business. Some would call them robber barons, but I call them benefactors. Stanford is something else the RICH did for me.
I have never been hired by, had a business funded by, seen a factory built by, or seen an endowment established by anything but a RICH person. How many of the nation’s 20M unemployed are seeking employment from the RICH. All of them are.
The economy may crash due to government and business malfeasance, property values may plummet as they did in Moscow in 1917, our currency may be devalued to the point of needing a bucket full of money to buy bread as it did in Germany, but I will be fine. Why? I will be fine because the RICH through their philanthropy established educational systems that I was able to attend. As long as I maintain my health and keep my skills intact, I will survive to thrive another day.
I thank all of the American ancestry both RICH and POOR for establishing a country to make it possible for a teacher’s kid from Kentucky to live the life that I have. The RICH did not do anything for me that they have not also done for Mr. Chuck Meny. Are we as a nation willing to sacrifice the RICH on the altar of socialism out of spite? I was not born to any more privilege than Chuck was. The difference in us is that I recognize generosity of the RICH along with the toil of the poor. The poor have toiled in America for the protections and rights that our founders had the wisdom to bestow upon us all. The poor have toiled in America so that they or their posterity can aspire to and have a better life.
Every American generation has produced rags to riches examples that have attracted the best and brightest from every country on earth. When the envy of the masses destroys this nation’s attractiveness as a place to live, then and only then will the United States of America join the evil oppressive empires that Mr. Meny has imagined in the history books of failed nations. You see, it was not the RICH that destroyed Rome, it was the entitlement mentality that both the RICH and POOR of Rome that Edward Gibbon documented in “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empireâ€.
I feel entitled to nothing and I envy no-one. That is the American way, as least it once was.
Awful brave Joe…
If you defend the Empire, you must be part of that dastardly, Empire. (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/10/17/obama_on_gop_the_empire_is_striking_back.html)
Watch out for the Ewoks! (like Chuck throwing rocks from above)
HA!
Standing – f*ing – ovation.
The beauty of living in a FREE society was that any average “Joe” could make something of himself. He could become a master of his own Universe. It’s really too bad such a country no longer exists on the face of the earth, but we only have ourselves to blame.
A man retains only those rights he is fully prepared to die for. This includes the right to live free of the injustices of forced participation in social programs that do not benefit him, i.e. Social Security, Medicare, Selective Service, and a host of other federal atrocities too numerous to mention.
The entitlement mentality – this idea that one man, because his faculties and dreams have never found fruition on their own merits, is entitled to the labor and hard-earned wealth of another man for the mere fact of his existence – has stolen what we often describe as “The American Spirit”, but might be more accurately described as simple ambition to be something other than a social leech, sucking up everything and producing nothing.
Self-reliance, something once written about and prized in this country, is a lost art. Excellence is equally rare. Mediocrity is not only encouraged, it’s expected of our youth. What other place or time can you think of that routinely rewards the losers equally with the victors, and to such a degree that it becomes systemic? Giving trophies to both teams in a kids baseball match becomes a bailout and “too big to fail” status when the kids grow up and become misguided and poorly-raised adults.
When things get so bad they are infecting us from the highest reaches of federal government, it is time to use the mechanisms available to us as free men and remove ourselves from such an arrangement.
The only solution to such a government that routinely rewards failure with the spoils of the few who succeed is abolution, destruction, or, failing that, full withdrawl. The best thing that could happen to the United States is to fall apart.
Yahoo displayed your blog when I looked for a specific keyword, that’s why I ended up here. Anyway, you have a great article, it’s worth reading and worthy of my time.
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