Up The River Without A Brain

Up The River Without A Brain
By: J.J. Jackson

The citizenry of Greece should be grateful for one thing and that is that they are not useless to the new socialist world order. At least not yet. This status of still being at least somewhat useful to the ends of elitists who think they know best how to manage the lives of everyone else has earned the Greeks a bailout from their fellow socialists which will help to keep them afloat until such time as either a) they miraculously and wondrously figure out how to make a failed ideology that has never worked actually work through the application of pixie dust or some other mythical substance, b) give up on socialism or c) they are simply no longer useful.

Meanwhile those in Greece who have been fooled into thinking that government money spent can actually exceed government money collected are rioting and even killing in the name of socialism having not quite figured out that their options are limited to these few things. And they are really going to go ballistic when they figure out that only one of those options will actually save them from even a worse fate than having their mouths forcibly removed from the teat of government. It is comical to watch this dance being performed yet again as it has so many times in the past as socialism collapses on itself. Those that have hitched their cart to a one legged horse are bailed out by others who have hitched their carts to two and three legged ones. All involved are all cripples, just not as crippled. To save themselves, other countries with their own gimpy horses have rushed to prop up Greece rather than let that country fail, reap the rotten fruits of that failure and learn a hard lesson that will make tem stronger as they start over. This is, of course, because they know that if the failure of Greece is witnessed and allowed to happen as it should the people they rule over will start to question the health of the horse pulling each of their own carts.

To make things even harder on ourselves we have all taken our gimpy horses whether they have one, two or three legs along with carts attached to them and tossed the whole mess in to the river. It is as if to say that since the lame horses cannot pull us maybe if we turned the cart into a boat we would do better. Well, the horses are drowning, the carts are leaking and we have no paddles.

I don’t care how much the people say they aren’t for socialism. What is ultimately the proof of any such claim is who they send to represent them in government. One thing I have learned from watching people is that most people are for some level of socialism. Usually and at the very least they want socialism for their own needs but do not want to be shackled with paying for the socialism of others.

If they are poor they want food, clothing and housing provided for them but they decry the old man getting a government pension. If they are old they love their government pensions but are certain that it is the poor with their free food, clothing and housing that is bankrupting the budget. If they are a single mother they want health care for their child and day care paid for by the government largess and speak about how it is the elderly and the poor that are causing all the trouble and taking money away from their child who really, really needs it.

Really these people don’t want true socialism. They just want their own free lunch. But as time wears on the whole shebang becomes a tangled web of entitlements targeting selected groups and woven to bring as many flies as possible into the spider’s den. And the spider is licking the poison from its fangs at the sight of flesh to consume. Too many people have a free for me but not for thee attitude and eventually everyone at some point has at least part of their hands in the cookie jar whether they even want to or not or whether they even know it or not.

This is a huge fear, I think, as to why people are so unnerved by the thought of just weeding out all the socialist unconstitutional and just plain bad spending that goes on at all levels of our government. Our elected officials have thrown so many tax dollars at groups of people to buy their votes and even businesses to subsidize products that people either don’t want or that they at best only marginally want until the price is artificially lowered. It is easy to talk about eliminating these expenditures but hard to accept the consequences which might result in higher costs even though lower taxes would offset that pain at least among the tax paying middle and upper classes.

As the hours roll on and the horses give up struggling against the current the problems will become more prevalent. Welfare class will be pitted against welfare class as each fights for a dwindling supply of resources. They will fight so hard and so long that they will not notice as the water continue to flood the cart. First it will rise up to their ankles and then their knees. It will then surge to their hips and to on to their shoulders. Then as the water reaches their lips a moment of realization will strike when that next breath of air turns to a gulp of water.

Then, at that moment, we will all either become Greeks with the welfare classes fighting to see who will stand on whose shoulders and who will be sacrificed to drown to save the rest for a little while longer or become a people that will reject the failures of socialism at any level and live in freedom and drag our selves and our fellow countrymen out of the river and begin anew. I certainly hope that realization comes soon and the light bulbs in our collective brains light up soon. Much sooner, I hope, than the socialists decide we are no longer useful and do what they always do to those they deem undesirable.

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J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh , PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the Pittsburgh Conservative Examiner for Examiner.com. He is also the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at www.libertyreborn.com