America’s Critical Shortage of Character

 

What follows is my column from today's Orlando Sentinel

By now the entire world is well aware of the story of the three teenagers who gunned down Christopher Lane, a 22-year old Australian attending college in Oklahoma.

That such a cold-blooded, senseless killing could take place is numbing to the mind of any rational, decent human being.

The problem is, rational, decent human beings are becoming increasingly scarce in the United States – and I am afraid our modern definition of human liberty is partly to blame.

I often ask my students to define the word “liberty” in short essay form. Predictably, most of the answers dovetail towards the idea that we all have the right to do whatever we want to do in a free country. When I ask them where the phrase “personal responsibility” and the rights of others enters into their definition of liberty I most often get blank stares.

A few students will manage to eventually say that liberty means our right to do anything peaceful as long as we do not harm another human being. Even fewer get the connection between liberty and bearing responsibility for all of our choices.

In essence, many Americans today believe that we should be allowed to do anything we want – and someone else should take responsibility for the poor decisions we make. Moreover, it means that in today’s America, we believe we should be able to pursue whatever makes us happy without consequences, commentary or criticism.

How else, for example, do you explain how many of today’s young male Americans dress and entertain themselves? They walk around with the tops of their pants around their thighs, their skin covered with tattoos, ill-fitting baseball caps on their heads and various body piercings. They drive cars that incessantly blast all sorts of vile music at ear-splitting decibel levels.

Meanwhile, as economists have increasingly observed, more of those young “men” are failing to finish school, are often only marginally attached to the labor force while being significantly attached to their parents homes, the criminal justice system and/or the welfare state.

Unfortunately, the story is not much better for young women. How often have you heard girls of today using language that would make a sailor blush? When was the last time you saw a younger female dressed with anything approaching modesty? You get the point.

It is not just the young folks who seem to have abandoned any sense of honor or integrity.

How often do we read about the failings of our business leaders, politicians, public servants and parents in carrying out their duties in an honorable fashion?

While I am the first to defend businesses and the profit motive, I must admit that these are not good times for liberty-loving supporters of capitalism.

Today, our economy has been high-jacked by the Crony-Capitalists – those corporations who have learned how to rig the formerly free enterprise system into one where lobbyists line the halls of Washington, D.C. to steal the taxpayers money or rig the economic system to keep other competitors out of the market.

This is accomplished, of course, with the assistance of politicians from both parties who actively create laws, regulations and taxes that punish the virtuous and rewards those who have learned how to effectively engage in legalized plunder.

Today, over 47 million Americans live on food stamps. Almost half no longer pay any income taxes. Fully two-thirds of all federal tax dollars received by the Treasury end up as a transfer to another person in our growing welfare state.

While we have only 5 percent of the world’s population, we have 25 percent of its prisoners.

Our public schools continue to rank at, or near the bottom, in scholastic achievement. And on and on…

Theodore Roosevelt once said, "Alike for the nation, and the individual, the one indispensable requisite is character - character that does and dares as well as endures, character that is active in the performance of virtue no less than firm in the refusal to do aught that is vicious or degraded."

The teens who murdered an innocent man for doing nothing more than jogging are simply symptomatic of a nation that has stood by and tolerated the erosion of virtue in our homes and in our institutions in favor of a definition of freedom that is devoid of personal integrity.

Until that changes, expect more senseless crimes in our “free” country.

When Summer was Easy

As I prepare to take a break from, well, everything, I came across this terrific article that puts modern America in an interesting perspective.  I hope you will take the time to read it, reflect upon it, comment on it and pass it around.  Enjoy the rest of the summer.  If I am alive when September arrives I will chat with you again then...

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By Dave Shiflett, July 5, 2013 Wall Street Journal

 

Of all the seasons, summer seems to evoke the most childhood memories, probably because of its singular status as the Season of No School! Ah, the freedom to frolic beyond the reach of scolding teachers and paddle-wielding assistant principals, to pursue the idle arts of cloud-gazing, star-counting, making firefly lanterns and perhaps even skinny-dipping with an adventurous cheerleader (or, more likely, her less-glamorous cousin).

As we grow older (I was born in 1955, during Eisenhower's first term), we are naturally inclined to compare summers then with summers now. To no one's surprise, many of us, from the heights of our knowledge, wisdom and middle-age distemper, find that summers aren't what they used to be.

Let us count a few of the ways.

First off, most of us born in the '50s spent summers in the raw, sweltering bosom of Mother Nature, which, with all due respect, wasn't exactly paradise, especially when the mosquitoes started feeding. Home air-conditioners were rare; only about 10% of homes had them by 1965 (around 80% of modern homes are climate-controlled). When it got hot, you turned on a fan. When it got real hot, you prayed for a thunderstorm.

People prayed a lot more back then, at least publicly, perhaps in part because it was still legal. At my public school in Roanoke, Va., we started each day with the Lord's Prayer, and heads bowed prior to most sporting events, weenie roasts and any other occasion where food was consumed. We were also likely to Praise The Lord when the DDT-spewing antimosquito fogger appeared on the horizon (haven't seen one of those in a while). This was, of course, the era of Mutual Assured Destruction, so it was important to have your bases covered at all times.

Also unlike today, we didn't watch much television during summer break. There were only three channels, and TV played a far-distant fiddle to the preferred vehicles of entertainment and enlightenment: books. We might be out of school, but we had summer reading lists, which these days don't seem to be as rigorous. A National Education Association newsletter noted a couple of years ago that middle-school students in the Arlington Central School District outside New York City were required to read at least one book during the summer. One whole book!

I recall (dimly) reading 40 books one summer—some assigned and some part of a local library program. This wasn't our only bookish experience. For many children in our neck of the woods, Vacation Bible School was a requirement of citizenship (VBS participation is also down). Besides dispensing cookies, watermelon and Kool-Aid, these programs focused young minds on talking snakes, parting seas and Jezebel's dangerous allure. We still sang "Onward Christian Soldiers," which was excellent preparation for many an afternoon's chief activity: playing war with toy guns.

Contemporary gunophobes will gasp, but guns were as common as iPhones are today. Most boys I knew had at least one toy rifle, pistol or submachine gun (preferably, one of each). We took our marching orders from guys like Kirby in "Combat!" (Kirb was the Baryshnikov of the Browning automatic rifle), Illya Kuryakin of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." (played by David McCallum, who has devolved into the mild-mannered Ducky of "NCIS") and of course the indomitable Sgt. Rock of comic-book fame. As we grew older we got BB-rifles, which were used (one cringes to recall) to reduce the local bird population and harass squirrels and other creatures further down the Great Chain of Being (we were all devout speciesists). We later graduated to .22s and shotguns; summer camps had rifle ranges and offered National Rifle Association gun-safety courses.

These days—when a 14-year-old West Virginia student can be arrested and suspended from school for refusing to take off his NRA T-shirt—a high body count would be assumed. I am happy to report that no member of my heavily armed circle ever shot anyone, though honesty requires the admission that one summer afternoon I did manage to shoot myself.

It happened after a small but heavily armed platoon of us was dropped off at a rural lake for an overnight camping trip. As I was taking a drag from a cigarette (essential to looking cool back then), my pistol fell off a nearby bench and discharged, blasting the Marlboro from between my fingers, cutting a groove in my right index finger and nearly trimming the tip of my nose.

Some readers may wonder why parents weren't hauled into court for sending their sons into the woods with loaded weapons. As it happens, my parents, who had earlier been traumatized when my older brother threw a spear into my back (it stuck, but only for a few seconds), are learning of the shooting incident for the first time as they read this article.

The larger fact is that, by today's standards, most parents of that era deserved to do time at Leavenworth. What sinners they were! They sent us outside without sunscreen, let us ride bikes without helmets and jump on trampolines without "safety barriers," and smiled as we vied with our siblings for the premier spot in the family sedan: the ledge underneath the back window, where you could stretch out and take a nap.

This isn't to say that they didn't run a tight ship. When we got out of line we were "corrected" with the help of leather belts or expertly wielded hairbrushes (known in some households as "Officer Porcupine"). If we cussed (about which more in a minute), we got our mouths washed out with soap. If someone had told us that a few decades hence parents could be arrested for such manifestations of concern, we would have assumed the commies had made good on their promise of world domination.

Yet back then, fixating on possible death and injury would be seen as neurotic. Perhaps this was because our parents had been through the Great Depression and World War II, which made postwar life seem relatively placid. Accidents happened, but they were accepted as part of life.

Another personal story illustrates the point. One summer I got a job on a local farm, where I was soon run over by a tractor and hay trailer, which drove ribs into both my lungs. Though I was initially thought to be dead, a crack team of surgeons revived me. Being young and resilient, I was out of the hospital in a little over a week.

We never sued the farm owners. Lawsuits were far rarer than today. "Ambulance chaser" was an epithet with a significant societal sting. Fewer than 90,000 civil cases were filed in 1970, according to public policy analyst Jürgen O. Skoppek, a number that by 1986 had risen 192%. These days we're suing each other over mold, hailed as the "next asbestos." None of which, to my mind, represents progress.

Summers past also looked a lot different. Around 13% of Americans were obese in the early 1960s, as compared with 36% today (about two-thirds of contemporary Americans are considered overweight or obese), which can make a trip to the beach a jarring experience.

The seashore of my youth was populated by people who were, relative to now, fairly thin. Huge people were rare: If you weighed in at 350 pounds or more you had a good crack at getting a job at the freak show (a staple of traveling summer carnivals). Nowadays beaches are covered with human manatees (I should disclose that I could be considered a junior manatee). This may be a testament, in part, to the self-esteem movement, which routed the notion that body size should be a cause of shame. Or maybe it's simply another reminder that there's safety in numbers.

Another cosmetic change: tattoos, which were largely confined to men with military or maritime experience, and bikers. Nowadays, according to a Harris Poll, 38% of adults 30 to 39 have tats, as do 30% of those 25 to 29 and 22% of those 18 to 24. Inked women slightly outnumber men. By comparison, only 11% of Americans 50 to 64 say they have tattoos, a number that drops to 5% for Americans 65 and older.

Why the proliferation of body ink? Twenty-five percent say tattoos make them feel "rebellious," like growing long hair back in the 1960s, while 30% say that they make them feel more sexy, 21% more attractive or strong and 8% more intelligent. Meanwhile, 45% of Americans without tattoos believe those who have them are less attractive, while 39% say they're less sexy and 27% less intelligent.

Of course, you could always cut your long hair if you got tired of it or faced an unexpected court date. Getting rid of a tattoo is not so easy, though 86% of tattoo bearers said that they have never regretted their decision, perhaps belying the idea that the younger generation has commitment issues.

Modern beaches are also different intellectually. When I was a kid, you saw lots of thinner people reading fat books. Now you see larger people staring at thin phones. Many are no doubt chronicling the adventures of their favorite literary character—themselves—updating their Facebook accounts with descriptions of eating Oreos, watching a seagull peck the eye out of a dead fish and spending 15 minutes the prior evening flushing the sand from between their massive glutes. It's almost enough to make one pity the NSA snoops who might be called upon to monitor these communications, thus putting themselves at extreme risk of acute inanity poisoning.

Which brings up another significant change: the rise of the wildly popular salutation/exhortation/denunciation/benediction known as the F-word, which not so long ago was the hydrogen bomb of obscenities, used primarily by men in combat, stevedores and golfers. Now it traipses lightly off the tongues of 14-year-olds at the slightest provocation—should that seagull, for example, hop over and steal a potato chip. Should cell coverage lapse, the oratory might match that of a pirate whose beard had caught afire.

Many oldsters blame rap music and Hollywood for this loss of a great tradition of selective cursing, but I would point instead to the deeply mundane existence of today's adolescents, nowhere more in evidence than during the long months of summer. Could the F-infestation be, at least in part, an attempt to dramatize lives made dull by design—a design requiring mandatory bicycle helmets, risk-free trampolines, pools without diving boards and now an attempt to drop the presumptive drunk-driving alcohol level to 0.05%, which some people can reach with a single glass of wine?

As always, proponents argue that if one life can be saved, it's worth it, though if that's their key concern, they might also focus their hysteria on such threats as falling out of bed, which claims around 600 American lives a year, according to Time magazine, and autoerotic asphyxiation, which takes another 1,000 citizens to early graves, according to WebMD.

Hypercaution has saved lives, but it has diminished life in the bargain.

Summers saw other enormous changes. In August 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, which became as familiar to my generation as the Declaration of Independence. The Summer of Love in 1967 spread the gospel of getting high, enlightening some and blighting others, while in July 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon, a testament to aiming high. Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974, AIDS was formally recognized by U.S. health authorities in June 1981. Along the way, summers saw the passing of national figures, ranging from Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford to Judy Garland, Jonas Salk, Jim Morrison and Jerry Garcia.

There were also personnel changes closer to home. Adults who seemed immortal in our youthful summers had their brushes with disease and death. Ditto for some cousins, friends and siblings—and ourselves. We rarely know the names of current bands, usually go to bed when we used to be going out, and say things like "I'd rather get a colonoscopy—make that a double colonoscopy!—than go camping."

Still, for all our nostalgia, we have accepted some of the changes that make modern summers so different from summers past. Should the sun suddenly blink off, for example, we might acknowledge this as a significant setback for our species—but a giant leap forward in the battle against sun-related cancers and premature wrinkling.

And just the other day, I was thinking that if my family had more progressive ideas about lawsuits when I got run over that long-ago June, I might today be living on a very nice farm.

The Fed has turned our Economy into a Drunken Spoiled Teenager with Car Keys

Poor stock investors.  Their sugar daddy - Ben Bernanke - announced this week that the Fed might, just might, end the gravy train of cheap money sometime later this year.

 

The stock market, along with gold, commodities and your grandma's investments in antique clocks all too a huge hit on this "terrible news".

 

To quote the President, "Let me be clear"....

 

Simply put, the whole country has been turned into a parent's worst nightmare - the drunk, spoiled teenager with keys to a car paid for with mommy and daddy's money.

 

The teenager in this case is all of us who are riding high on the most massive printing of fiat (translation: worthless in the future) money since Adam and Eve were first trying on underwear.

 

Ron Paul warned all of us about this stuff.  When you have a currency that is not backed by gold and is controlled by human beings - and those human beings are trying to stimulate the demand for goods and services - and do not have to answer to anyone and put "In God we Trust" on what they are printing, it is a recipe for disaster.

 

Just ask the Germans who remember the 1920s.  Ask current residents of Zimbabwe about the hyperinflation created by Robert Mugabe.  Ask any nation that has ever printed money to deal with economic problems.  The result is always - I repeat ALWAYS the same.

 

The people fall in love with cheap money, making it hard for central banks to stop giving them cheap money.

 

The cheap money eventually leads to a devaluation of the currency which leads to huge increases in prices.

 

The huge increases in prices lead to a collapse in the economy.

 

Then, depending on the politics of the day. the collapse in the economy leads to new politicians or new dictators or new World Wars.

 

I find it hard to believe that in just seven years after the last cheap money recession began we are now pushing towards the same - and bigger result - with even more cheap money.

 

Somewhere around 137% of the current increase in home values and stock prices is tied to cheap money.  This means 137% of the next recession will be caused by the consequences of cheap money.

 

The Fed (which should be abolished) should announce that the bond-buying binge is going to end and let the drunk teenagers (us) with car keys (economic choices) pay for their own cars with sound money that comes from an economy driven by real economic growth polices (low taxes, less regulations and tighter money supplies).

 

I don't think Bernanke has the guts to tell Obama that the cheap credit days are going to end and need to be replaced with Reagan-like fiscal policies.

 

Since it is unlikely that quantitative squeezing is coming any time soon, we can expect those who are addicted to cheap money to cry and scream every time the Fed (our money parents) even mention making us live within our means.

 

Living within our means will be what results from the sugar daddy Fed driving our economy into the ditch of irresponsible monetary policy.

 

Enjoy the ride....

If Tim Tebow fails again, it might be because God is opposing him

Tim Tebow's new job with the New England Patriots might be in jeopardy.

 

The photo on the left is one possible reason.

 

Many of you might not know this, but I am a graduate of The University of Oklahoma.  The same OU that Tebow's Gators beat for the National Championship of college football many seasons ago. 

 

I am not bitter that my school lost.  I am not angry either.  I am, however, convinced that the man upstairs has put the bad mojo on Tebow over something he did during this game.

 

Late in the contest, the Christian Tim Tebow looked at an OU player and very pridefully did the "Gator Chomp" in his face.  No one said anything about it in the broadcast booth.  Since then, all we have been told is that this "messiah in cleats" (look it up, if you don't believe me...) is pretty much the most near-flawless human being to walk the planet since.....__________ (you fill in the blank).

 

In the Bible there is a verse in James 4:6 that reads, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."

 

And there it is.

 

I have told my sons - both fine athletes in their own right that this verse should be emblazoned in their minds in every game they play.  After all, can you imagine your odds of success when God is your opponent?

 

I have never heard Tebow express remorse for this incident.  He can say "God bless" at the end of every interview from here to rapture, but if he has not asked for forgiveness for this incredible display of pride and arrogance towards a fellow human being, I am afraid God will show up at the Patriots camp and keep Tebow's horrible throwing motion right where it is.

 

While I am at it, to all the rest of you athletes who so openly profess your love of Jesus - right after you dance around like a horses rear end in the endzone, you need to wise up too.  First, God does not care that you can run with a football.  Second, he does not want you bringing prideful attention to yourself and third (look it up), he wants you to pray in private for your good fortune rather than carry on like the Pharisees used to - you know, praying out in the open so everyone could admire them.

 

It is up to you now, Tim.  I hope you get this right soon, otherwise it is going to be another long season for you.

Sadly, the WWII generation only bought us time..

As I am normally inclined to do every June 6th, last night I went out into my game room and watched Saving Private Ryan by myself.  I do this as an annual reminder of an event that is very important to me personally and to our nation.

 

The Youtube video below is an interview of my wife's uncle - and in my heart, my uncle as well.  His name is Bill Coleman and sadly, he died last December.

 

Bill Coleman was part of the United States Airborne that dropped into France the night before the D-Day invasion. 

 

Not long after this teenager from Florida landed he was taken prisoner by the Germans and spent the rest of the war as a POW before he managed to escape.  Later, he worked in innumerable business ventures, was a member of the Florida legislature, consulted with Tom Hanks on the Band of Brothers series and even parachuted into Normandy again - when he was 80 years old - where he received the highest medal given by the French government.

 

While he was alive, I spent as much time as I could with him, asking question after question about his experiences, his life after the war, his view of politics, the future of America and more.

 

Last night, two things dawned on me.  First, I miss Bill Coleman more than he can know.  Second, he and the other men who fought during World War II gave up so much - including 405.000 who were killed - only to buy our nation time before the clock winds down on us for good.

 

What I mean by that is very simple.

 

June 6, 1944 took place 160 years after the signing of The Declaration of Independence.  When the signers of this sacred philosophical contract were done, they probably knew that there would be an expiration date on it.

 

Thomas Jefferson once said, "The inevitable progression of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield." 

 

The inevitable progression....inevitable...

 

What a prophetic word.  Jefferson and the others were brilliant students of history.  They knew that no major power had ever survived.  From Egypt to Rome to Great Britain, all had died under the weight of more and more government corruption, power, waste and hubris.  None even managed to survive as significant players in world history.  All of these empires became poor and largely ignored as the world was reshaped over and over again.

 

When Bill Coleman dropped into France, he was fighting for his life, the life of other members of the Airborne and the life of our nation.  He could not know that by 2013, 69 years later, that the nation he fought for would have devolved into the same character-less shell that other nations had become.

 

In my talks will Mr. Coleman, he expressed grave concern over where our nation was heading.  He spoke often of the growing apathy for liberty, the entitlement mentality, the lack of honor in our "leaders" and more.  You could sense the sadness he felt was very real and I often wondered if he ever felt like his efforts and the lives that were lost were worth it.

 

I am sure he would say it was.  After all, our nation could have died 69 years ago under the tyranny of Germany and Japan.

 

I am so thankful that his generation of Americans managed to buy us precious time as we inevitably slouch towards the same fate as Rome. 

 

Historians will someday record that our nation managed to maintain a system of relative liberty longer than any in history.  How many years that system will last is not certain.  My great-grandchildren will more likely see the end than I will. 

 

Until then, I think all of us who believe in liberty need to keep doing our small little part to preserve it even as we today read about our government mining our phone, email and Internet activity for the past seven years.  We need to be mindful that governments have always been - and always will be - corrupt and filled with dishonest people who value power over freedom.

 

All we can do is fight the good fight so that our posterity will look back and know that we fought for them too.

 

First DNA testing. Then....and then.....and then....

"It may be wise, as the court obviously believes, to make the Leviathan all-seeing, so that he may protect us all the better. But the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would not have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection. I dissent."

These are the words of Antonin Scalia, who yesterday was one of four Supreme Court justices, that dissented in the 5-4 ruling that allows the police to DNA test us without a warrant if we are a suspect in a "serious" crime.

And here it begins.

 

Remember when there was no legal requirement to wear a seat belt?  Then came laws saying we had to wear it or get ticket - but only if we were stopped for doing something else.  Now, we can be stopped and ticketed just for the refusal to protect ourselves from a wreck.  It does not matter that we own our bodies and cars and thus the seat belts.  Get a ticket for not using your property the way the state says you should.  I wonder what we will be required to use next?

 

Remember when you could willingly refuse to engage in commerce?  Now the Obama Administration tells us that starting next year we could be fined or ultimately jailed if we refuse to engage in commerce in the health insurance sector.  I wonder what we will be required to buy next?

 

Remember when we could read our mail without worrying about the government reading it first?  Now, thanks to the Patriot Act the powers that be can read our mail, our email and monitor our Internet activity - and prosecute us without first letting us know that they have been reading our personal correspondence.  I wonder what they will listen in on, or read next?

 

These, of course, are on top of a million other laws and regulations telling us what we can eat, what we can and cannot say, which adults we can have consensual relationships with, whose dinner we have to buy, what retirement plan we will be forced to contribute to, where we can set up a business, what type of business it can be, what type of employees can work there, what we must pay them and on and on and on...

 

People say to me - when I express concern over issues like this - "Mr. Chambless, if you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. 

 

Incorrect. 

 

It is because I am doing nothing wrong that I do worry.

 

Why?

 

Because the government keeps changing the definition of "wrong."

 

Mark my words.  Within 10 years we will be DNA checked for far more than being suspects in serious crimes.  20 years from now we will be required to submit DNA to the government as a condition of driving, getting married and/or other pursuits. 

 

By July 4, 2076 there will be a national data bank with every American's DNA profile - and more - so that the people we put into power can know more about us than the Founders ever intended.

 

Do not be surprised if by our 300th anniversary the federal government will also have managed to have everyone submit to some form of GPS tracking. 

 

You know, to keep us "safe".

Wasting money battling life's losers...

Sometime today a home security company will send a representative to my house where I will proceed to shell out a boatload of money to have a home protection/monitoring system installed. 

 

This is on top of the money I have already spent this weekend on timing switches for our lights.

 

That is on top of taking my 12-gauge shotgun out from under my bed and placing it in an area where I can get to it faster.

 

That is on top of a very unenjoyable talk I had to have with my sons about how to defend their mother if I am ever away when some thug tries to enter our home.

 

Why all the fuss?

 

It is pretty simple.

 

I used to live in the Central Florida equivalent of Mayberry, North Carolina.  Dirt roads, friendly people and a slow, quiet lifestyle.

 

No more.

 

A few weeks ago, three homes within a half mile or less or our house were burglarized.

 

Shortly after than, our neighbor about 150 yards behind us had a break in while he was napping.

 

Three days ago, our neighbor across the street - about 30 yards away had the same happen to her.

 

When I talked to the police who were working her case I found myself realizing what my brother - the Chief of Police in a major midwestern town told me.  "Jack, the police always show up after the fact..."

 

That being the case, I now have to spend my hard-earned money to do something about "before the fact", or "during the fact".

 

And that has caused something "funny" to dawn on me.

 

First, I wonder if the losers who are robbing people of their property in town have jobs doing something productive somewhere else and simply rob people to supplement travel plans or the purchase of better health care plans?

 

Probably not.

 

I wonder what the odds are that in addition to robbing people of their property these thugs live in part off of those same people in the form of foodstamps and welfare?

 

High odds, I would venture to say.

 

I wonder, if I end up shooting one of them some day, if (should they not die) my taxes will be used to pay for their recovery while in the hospital?

 

Yes, that is true too.

 

Isn't it just a little ironic that for those of us who work hard every day to earn money we end up first having our money taken by force so that losers can eat and have a roof over their heads, only to have those ungrateful jerks then break into our homes and cars and businesses so they can have even more of our stuff?

 

A good friend of mine in Tennessee once told me about a buddy of his who worked two jobs and many hours every day to take care of his family.

 

Someone was telling his buddy about this or that program that was "needed" to help the poor.

 

His buddy said, "To h... with the poor!  What did they ever do for me?"

 

Good question.