Going Out A Winner

By Douglas V. Gibbs

When George Steinbrenner, the majority owner of baseball's New York Yankees, died recently I wrote about it, and finished the article saying that King George went out a winner.

Liberal readers soon began sending comments and Emails about that statement. It bothered them that I considered a man who had amassed a great deal of wealth, largely as a hard-hitting business man, was a "winner." And if George Steinbrenner is one of the winners, then there must also be losers. If being a winner is gaining lots of profit, then losers must be those who don't make it.

In a sense, "yes," that is correct, but not in the way the liberals assume.

I believe that America is the land of opportunity, and there is plenty of wealth to go around for everybody if you are just willing to go out and get it. Even those in what the government calls "poverty stricken" are not there on a permanent basis in America. With the right amount of work, lucky breaks, sweat, consistent application, persistence, and so forth, any one of the numerous Americans in this nation could be the next George Steinbrenner. And by reaching that level of success, it could be said they got tired of losing at the bottom, and decided to become a winner.

The abhorrence of what I said about Steinbrenner comes from the fact that the people on the Left have been convinced that profit is bad, that individualism is bad, and that whenever someone gains wealth it takes wealth away from somebody somewhere else.

That is simply not true.

Specific actions have consequences. Our life's successes and failures are all direct and indirect results of the decisions we have made in our lives. Some of us have had more lucky breaks than others, but ultimately, our wealth, status, popularity, or whatever you consider to be success, is dependent upon ourselves. I watched my father, who had been born in a family of wealth, die in debt. But he was happy because he owned a large part of land that he considered paradise, and he lived there the final years of his life. For him, it was success, and he was a winner, but in the end he did lack a few things, and all of that was because of his own decisions.

I have a friend that grew up in a poor neighborhood, and was raised by a single mother. In elementary school some bullies picked on him, and called him a "dumb Mexican." He could have cowered down, cried he was being picked on, decided the world was unfair, and that those racist white kids were keeping him down, and then apply to the government for hand-outs. Instead, he decided he would never be called a "dumb Mexican" again, hit his studies hard, ended up going to West Point, and now lives a very successful, and monetarily profitable, life in Florida.

He is a winner.

I believe in individuals. I believe that as individuals we should be able to make the decisions we need to make for our success. Government should step out of the way and let us allow our individualism its maximum potential by giving us maximum freedom to pursue our endeavors. As individuals we should be allowed to achieve. We can all become winners. If you don't achieve, it is not the attitude of a winner to give up, sit in a hole, and let government take care of you. That is not what America is supposed to be about.

The most successful societies, including ours (at least until of late) are founded upon, and maintain, a restraint on government, rather than the restraint of the opportunities of individuals. Individuals are intelligent enough to go for it, solve our own problems, and make the right decisions. If we foul up, we fall, get back up, brush ourselves off, and go for it again. We don't need big government as a resolution of our problems, and in fact, when government tries to get involved, they muck it all up.

Individualism and a limited government does not mean I am advocating no government. Of course there must be a requisite amount of government for the purpose of ensuring law and order is maintained in our society. And a government is necessary to provide a military to protect our union from foes that may have a determination to bring harm to our free society. It is an imperfect world, and with our freedom comes the responsibility to treat our freedom properly, and for it to be protected by a government limited in its ability to intrude, but also given authority to protect us in maximizing our political and economic freedoms.

Because it is an imperfect world, there will be those that fall by the wayside. They have the choice of getting up and rejoining the fight for survival, and the journey to success, or they can be left behind. When government begins to attempt to create a social utopia, that ultimately cannot be achieved, by increasing the size of government, and creating entitlement programs to hand gifts out to anyone that can't keep up, also known as a socialistic redistribution of wealth, compassion becomes a word void of meaning because everyone begins to realize that the American Dream takes work, but mere subsistence under the watchful eye of government takes little or no effort at all. The society begins to stop being prosperous, and the burden of taxation to pay for the entitlements becomes greater on the shoulders of the successful, to the point that success is no longer worth it, and to the point that the entitlement programs expand to a point that the government can't afford it anymore.

Then, under all of that weight, economies collapse.

Strong values, wholesome family values, and hard work ethics are all at the core of a productive, prosperous, and protected (therefore peaceful) society. Equal opportunity to become achievers garners more achievement. Less restrictions by the government along the road to achievement encourages more to work towards achieving. And none of those values can be provided by government. In fact, government does not wish to provide anything to anybody. Government cannot be a "provider." It is not capable of it. Government only knows how to take away, and redistribute.

There is one God, and from that God we have been given our rights. Our rights, therefore, should not be something the government attempts to take away. And from that God also comes our morality, and from those beliefs comes the foundational elements of this nation. God's laws are not subject to amendment, modification, or elimination by man. They are inalienable. And with those beliefs comes freedom, liberty, the right to pursue what makes you happy, and if achievement is that pursuit, in America you are supposed to be free to pursue it.

That is what has made America the greatest nation on this Earth. This is an exceptional nation, not because we are superior, but because our nation, and its government, was founded upon principles that seek to allow maximum individual achievement, and in truth, allows us to go for it all, and in the end, if we achieve as we desire, to go out a winner.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary