r****a
发帖数: 3249 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 LosAngeles 讨论区 】
发信人: rowena (最忆是江南), 信区: LosAngeles
标 题: response to 'income inequality' speech
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Fri Feb 28 11:24:29 2014, 美东)
January 2014 - Bob Lonsberry, Rochester talk radio personality responds to
Obama's 'income inequality speech':
Two Americas, the America that works and the America that doesn't. The
America that contributes and the America that doesn't. It's not the haves
and the have not's, it's the dos and the don'ts. Some people do their duty
as Americans, obey the law, support themselves, contribute to society and
others don't. That's the divide in America.
It’s not about income inequality, it’s about civic irresponsibility.
It’s about a political party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization
in order to win elective office. It’s about a political party that loves
power more than it loves its country. That’s not invective, that’s truth,
and it’s about time someone said it.
The politics of envy was on proud display a couple weeks ago when
President Obama pledged the rest of his term to fighting 'income inequality.
' He noted that some people make more than other people, that some people
have higher incomes than others, and he says that’s not just.
That is the rationale of thievery. The other guy has it, you want it,
Obama will take it for you. Vote Democrat. That is the philosophy that
produced Detroit. It is the electoral philosophy that is destroying America.
It conceals a fundamental deviation from American values and common
sense because it ends up not benefiting the people who support it, but a
betrayal. The Democrats have not empowered their followers, they have
enslaved them in a culture of dependence and entitlement, of victimhood and
anger instead of ability and hope.
The president’s premise – that you reduce income inequality by
debasing the successful – seeks to deny the successful the consequences of
their choices and spare the unsuccessful the consequences of their choices.
Because, by and large, income variations in society is a result of
different choices leading to different consequences. Those who choose wisely
and responsibility have a far greater likelihood of success, while those
who choose foolishly and irresponsibly have a far greater likelihood of
failure. Success and failure usually manifest themselves in personal and
family income.
You choose to drop out of high school or to skip college - and you are
apt to have a different outcome than someone who gets a diploma and pushes
on with purposeful education. You have your children out of wedlock and life
is apt to take one course; you have them within a marriage and life is apt
to take another course. Most often in life our destination is determined by
the course we take.
My doctor, for example, makes far more than I do. There is significant
income inequality between us. Our lives have had an inequality of outcome,
but, our lives also have had an inequality of effort. While my doctor went
to college and then devoted his young adulthood to medical school and
residency, I got a job in a restaurant.
He made a choice, I made a choice, and our choices led us to different
outcomes. His outcome pays a lot better than mine.
Does that mean he cheated and Barack Obama needs to take away his wealth
? No, it means we are both free men in a free society where free choices
lead to different outcomes.
It is not inequality Barack Obama intends to take away, it is freedom.
The freedom to succeed, and the freedom to fail. There is no true option for
success if there is no true option for failure.
The pursuit of happiness means a whole lot less when you face the
punitive hand of government if your pursuit brings you more happiness than
the other guy. Even if the other guy sat on his arse and did nothing. Even
if the other guy made a lifetime’s worth of asinine and shortsighted
decisions.
Barack Obama and the Democrats preach equality of outcome as a right,
while completely ignoring inequality of effort.
The simple Law of the Harvest – as ye sow, so shall ye reap – is
sometimes applied as, “The harder you work, the more you get." Obama would
turn that upside down. Those who achieve are to be punished as enemies of
society and those who fail are to be rewarded as wards of society.
Entitlement will replace effort as the key to upward mobility in
American society if Barack Obama gets his way. He seeks a lowest common
denominator society in which the government besieges the successful and
productive to foster equality through mediocrity.
He and his party speak of two Americas, and their grip on power is based
on using the votes of one to sap the productivity of the other. America is
not divided by the differences in our outcomes, it is divided by the
differences in our efforts. It is a false philosophy to say one man’s
success comes about unavoidably as the result of another man’s
victimization.
What Obama offered was not a solution, but a separatism. He fomented
division and strife, pitted one set of Americans against another for his own
political benefit. That’s what socialists offer. Marxist class warfare
wrapped up with a bow.
Two Americas, coming closer each day to proving the truth to Lincoln’s
maxim that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand.' |
