Grey Matters

Some time ago I read an account written by a visitor to a New Orleans hotel who had just gotten onto the elevator when a man came running down the hall shouting “Hoe dee doe!”. Not being a Louisiana native, he did not realize the man wanted him to “Hold the door.”

I hoe dee doe all the time. I hold the door for others at the bank, supermarket, post office and so on. I always have. It’s a small courtesy that costs me very little and can brighten another’s day.

Reactions are mixed. The most adverse reaction I ever got was from a Little Old Lady in Long Beach, CA when I was stationed there (’69-’72). We were waiting for the bank to open. I was first in line and the Little Old Lady was right behind me.

When the door was unlocked, I pulled it open and stepped aside, allowing the Little Old Lady to precede me. As she walked by me, she hunched up her shoulders, clutched her purse to her bosom and gave me the evil eye, as though I intended to snatch her purse.

Most people appreciate having the door held. Some will thank me, some just nod. Older people seem the least surprised, non-whites the most surprised (I’m white.)

I always feel a bit guilty when the person for whom I’m holding the door speeds up a bit so as not to keep me waiting.

Today I encountered the most interesting reaction in all the years I’ve been holding doors for others. At the post office, I held the door for a late-teens-early-twentyish young lady and got no reaction at all. None. She was texting furiously and never even looked up from her phone as she walked through the held door. Takes all the fun out of it.

Following the various primary campaigns has revealed that Ron Paul and his ideas are seen by many as loony. Ofttimes there is the admission “I like some of his ideas” but I think that people fear that Ron Paul, if elected, would “get us kilt” or something similar.

Ron Paul tends to be libertarian. Ron Paul was in fact a Libertarian (big “L”, meaning a member of the Libertarian party). What non-libertarians fail to consider is that libertarians desire a libertarian society.

That is, we want libertarian policies but we want therm in the context of a libertarian society. So, while libertarians want, for example, open borders, they do not want open borders in our current welfare state society where any Tomaso, Ricardo or Harrietta who can cross the border is given free services at the expense of American taxpayers.

“Open borders”, given the current state of affairs, is indeed a loony idea.

As for Paul’s foreign policy, I’m not so sure it is rightly categorized as “isolationist”. I think he just wants, as do other libertarians, the USA to stop meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. (Show of hands — How many of you think the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were a good idea? A libertarian would never have done that.)

Does America need to be protected against terrorism? You betcha. But it could be done more effectively and on a much smaller budget.

Naturally, the transition to a libertarian society could not happen overnight. Some things could be done quickly, like abolishing the Department of Education. But others would require a gentle transition from the nanny state to independence.

Even Big-L Libertarians have no desire to throw the country into turmoil.

So, when thinking about Ron Paul’s ideas, try thinking about them in the context of a libertarian society. If they still seem loony to you, then I’m reasonably sure a libertarian society itself seems loony as you are an authoritarian — the opposite of a libertarian.

As I’ve written before, liberals and conservatives are two sides of the same authoritarian coin.

“Both Liberals and Conservatives want to mold society to their liking. Conservatives want a moral, God-fearing society while Liberals want us all to be nice to each other (or else!) and share everything like good socialists. Both Liberals and Conservatives are willing to use police powers (government) to enforce their idea of a perfect society and proper behavior. Viewed in the three-dimensional universe, “conservative” and “liberal” are actually pretty close together. They are two sides of the same authoritarian coin.”

When you consider how many of “society’s” problems are caused or exacerbated by government’s good intentions, a minimalist libertarian government makes a lot of sense.

In response to a charge that he is anti-immigration, Mitt Romney stated that his father was born in Mexico.

Does that make George Romney an “immigrant”?

George Romney was born to American parents living in the Mormon Colonies in Mexico.  But was he then of Mexican nationality? Or was he in fact an American, born to American parents, who happened to be living in Mexico at the time?

Mitt was clearly implying that his father was a Mexican immigrant when he stated that his father was born in Mexico. But was George Romney in fact an immigrant? Of course not. He even ran for president, something he could not have done if he had been an immigrant.

This is indicative of two things.

1. Where one is born does not, in and of itself, determine your nationality or citizenship. Parentage is important too, specifically, their nationalities.

2. Mitt is either stupid or he was dissembling when he mentioned where his father was born, in an attempt to deflect the criticism that he is anti-immigration.

On the NBC network news tonight, discussing Romney’s 1040, the talking head made a matter-of-fact reference to “a tax code that favors the rich.”

Sure.

Taxpayer “A” pays $2,000 in income tax.
Taxpayer “B” pays $20,000,000 in income tax.

And the conclusion is that the tax code favors taxpayer “B”.

Uh-huh.

And if inmate “A” is sentenced to 2 years and inmate “B” gets life in prison, I guess the penal code favors inmate “B”.

It’s been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. Nonsense. The root of all evil is a sense of entitlement.

From the conquering empire builder taking over country after country right down to the mugger on the street demanding your wallet or purse, these are people who feel entitled. Entitled to rule, entitled to your money. The difference is only one of scale.

A con man once opined: “If they’re stupid enough to get scammed, they don’t deserve their money.” By virtue of his ability to decieve you, he feels entitled to your money.

When a burglar steals from your home, he feels entitled to what he takes; he would not take it otherwise. When a rapist assaults a woman, he feels entitled to have his way with her. It’s hard to imagine that a mugger, demanding your wallet, doesn’t feel entitled to take what he wants.

When a Madoff or a Ponzi takes your life savings, he likely feels entitled to it owing to his superior intelligence or cleverness. You have it coming, due to your own stupidity or failure to do your homework. You don’t deserve to keep your money. He deserves it simply because he’s able to get it.

The thief with a heart of gold, the one who feels guilty about victimizing others, is in very short supply. Mostly, they take what they want out of a sense of entitlement.

The sub-prime mortgage crisis that put a majority of the world’s economy into a steep decline was conceived by the Clinton administration’s sense that people who could not afford to make mortgage payments were nonetheless entitled to get mortgage loans.

You’d think then that we’d be teaching our young that they need to work for what they get, that prosperity comes from hard work; it is not something to steal from others. You’d think that and you’d be wrong.

Instead, for many decades now, moonbats all around the world have been teaching that we are all entitled. They tell voters: “We can have it all and someone else will pay for it. You want it, they have it, vote for me and I’ll get it for you. You’re entitled.”

This came as very good news to people who were afraid they might have to work for a living. Imagine their relief to learn that they are entitled to cradle-to-grave security. Naturally, they voted the moonbats into office in droves in most of the civilized world. The moonbats, as promised, created vast entitlements by law.

The problem is that the math didn’t quite work out as planned. The “they” who earn the money don’t actually have as much as imagined. Not only that but raising their taxes is a powerful disincentive to producing wealth in the first place. The moonbats hadn’t counted on that. They envisioned an unceasing supply of wealth to be siphoned off to placate the entitled. Worse, the entitled really took their entitlement to heart, and began demanding more and more.

When taking from those who earned wealth proved to be inadequate to satisfy the needs of the entitled, the moonbats began taking from those who had yet to earn. Governments the world over borrowed money, obligating future generations to pay for the “entitlements” of today’s citizens.

Not surprising then that this Ponzi scheme eventually came unravelled, as all such do. Governments in the sudden throes of reality find they must reduce entitlements or declare bankruptcy. The entitled, for their part, are not protesting the policies that brought their governments to the brink of insolvency, rather, they are demanding that the entitlements not be curtailed. <http://www.otfb.com/blog/?p=1180> The sense of entitlement learned at the moonbats’ knee was learned a bit too well.

The “Occupy” movement is born of this sense of entitlement. “We’re entitled to jobs.” “We’re entitled to health care.” “We’re entitled to college educations.” “Gimme, gimme, gimme.”

After many weeks of floundering about, with an eclectic list of grievances and demands, someone has distilled the “Occupy” movement down to “a protest of corporate greed.” But, actually, it’s about entitlements. Every person there wants something and rather than going out and working for it, they are demanding it. They feel entitled.

The “Occupy” movement is just a bunch of extortionists, demanding we provide them with various things and giving us a taste of the violence that will ensue if their demands are not met.

“What do we want?”
[fill in the blank]
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”

As with thieves, looters, con men, welfare cheats and robbers everywhere, it’s all driven by a sense of entitlement. “Gimme, gimme, gimme!”

Update of March 2018

Following the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, there was a huge outpouring of demand, seemingingly spearheaded by children, but orchestrated and financed by handlers from anti-gun organizations, demanding more gun control. These kids feel entitled to be safe. I have no problem with that but I have a huge problem with their assumption that gun control is the answer. They need to do their homework.

Entitlement having been drilled into their heads for decades now, they demand to be taken seriously. Along the way, they’ve been taught that respect is something to be demanded, not earned.

When you’ve been told “you deserve respect,” people not accustomed to thinking things through might think that their ideas also deserve respect. Thus it’s not necessary to actually know what you’re talking about. Just demand respect, demand safety, demand gun control and the powers that be beter damn-well provide it. Or else.

A sense of entitlement continues to power some of the worst movements in America.