The Audacity of Hope - Part One - The Entitlement Culture

Since I commute an hour one way to work I have plenty of time to listen to audiobooks.  The most recent book that I finished was "The Audacity of Hope" by none other than our current President.  I want to be open to all sides of an argument so I decided it would be a good way to see what he had to say in his book.  I think that the definition of audacity from Webster's dictionary sums it up pretty good,  "bold or arrogant disregard of normal restraints."
It is amazing to go through this book and hear President Obama talk about his political career and hear him say that one of hist most humbling moments in running for his senate seat was to realize that he was the best qualified individual in the state of Illinois to fill the senate seat.  This realization came to him before he decided to run not after the people of Illinois had elected him.  That statement alone disturbed me because his most humbling moment lacked any trace of humility.  His disregard of normal restraints continues as he talks about the conservative movement with disdain.  He says the conservative movement started with Reagan and came to it's logical conclusion with Bush.  He stated that the religious conservative right had helped fuel the movement but that their influence was waning as well and that their beliefs were out of date.Given that he wrote this book a few years ago when there was so much anit-bush sentiment being spewed by the main stream media it is safe to assume that he thought the majority of the people in the country agreed with this view. If he could only see the country now and see how he would stir up so many in this country to re-invigorate the conservative movement to a level that is not even understood right now.
Another one of the scary things that he talks about in this book was that how the free market principles upheld by the conservative movement had failed and that the only hope, as he saw it, was to modernize the new deal policies of F.D.R.. I mentioned this is scary right, let me explain why.  Look back at history and see what the new deal put into place, some of the most fiscally destructive policies that this country has ever seen.  Major entitlement programs were put into place that the country even then, and especially now, could not afford.  Along with the massive budget deficits that came along with all of these entitlements, it started in America what I refer to as the entitlement culture which I'll explain in a minute.
First however, I should admit that in the past I have used these entitlement programs such as Pell grants, medicaid, subsidized housing and food stamps to help me get through college while supporting a family.  I even used a government program to help me get in my house without a down payment.  I am sorry for this and if I could go back and do it over I would. My only excuse is that I didn't fully understand how detrimental these entitlements were to our country and to those who use them.
Yes, I just said that they are detrimental to those who use them and by that I mean that it teaches us that we do not necessarily have to be self reliant.  If the going gets too hard we can rely on others to help us.  There is nothing wrong with this view but you have to be careful to point out two things.  When the going gets too hard and we have to rely on others to help us we cannot abandon our own efforts to become self reliant.  Hard work and thrift are very important to our souls and when things come too easy it does have a negative effect on us. The second important thing that we need to remember is that those "others" that we rely on should be people or sources of help that are doing it out of charity and the goodness of their own hearts and not doing it by government mandate.  This means that in times of trouble we should first and foremost make sure that we are doing the best we can and make sacrifices when needed.  For example, I could have made it through on my own had I taken time off to save up more money to get through school. After making sure that we are doing everything that we can we then appeal to our families and churches for help.  No one should be forced to be charitable.  There is one being who thought it was a good idea to force everyone to do what is right and that being is Lucifer. This means to me that forcing someone to be charitable cannot lead to anything good since the founder of that very idea is the devil himself.
Now to the entitlement culture. Having experienced this myself, I think I can explain it.  When someone finds out that they can get something for seemingly nothing it is pretty easy to make the decision to take that something. Once they see how easy it was the first time, they look for more ways to get something for nothing and after a while they seem to think that they deserve all of the benefits they are getting without the effort of paying for them.  The effect that this has is that it takes something that used to be a luxury, like going to college, and makes it seem more like all of us are entitled to it.  In my case it truly was a luxury to have help paying for our degrees and the babies that were coming into our family as both my wife and I sought our degrees.We justified ourselves in taking the help that other people were forced to pay for because we looked at it more like an investment.  We knew that our education would help us contribute to society both through the taxes we would pay later in life and through the good children we would raise.  In reality however we could have had the same luxury had we just been more patient and worked hard and saved our money and paid for it ourselves.
Unfortunately, in our society there are leeches.  Those who take the benefits the entitlement programs offer with no intention of bettering their situation or trying to contribute themselves to these programs later in life are examples of such leeches. Also, those who fraudulently obtain entitlement benefits are leeches as well.  These leeches only add to the speed at which these entitlement programs are bankrupting our nation.
The only way to combat the entitlement culture is to change our views and stop trying to get something for nothing. Are we willing in our lives to do two things? First, work hard and sacrifice and be thrifty and do all that we can to be self reliant.  Second, of our own free will and out of the charity of our hearts, reach out to help those of us who struggle or who are less fortunate. If all of us can do this then there will be no need for anyone to use the entitlement programs of the government and all that tax payer money can go to do what is our moral obligation, paying our debts.