Why is it that we in the west seem to lurch back and forth between valuing freedom and suffocating it? The biggest reason is that most voters are either intellectually lazy or simply gullible, and are easily swayed by emotional arguments. We all know the kind. "Oh, that poor child! He's hungry and it's capitalism's/society's fault." Or, "My goodness, look at all the crime we have! It must be due to poverty and unequal wealth distribution." We are bombarded by the media's incessant message that we are a society of heartless, selfish sob's that need to be controlled by government. The bigger the better.
We have brief periods of relief from the tyranny of the media only because occasionally a Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher comes along and manages to divert the attention of the masses from the free lunch philosophy the leftist media espouses.
The media is not populated by geniuses or wealth creators. It is made up of shallow-minded liberals who believe that no one is ever responsible for their own circumstances. They, and therefore the average ( i.e. non-thinking) voter, cling to the belief that wealth somehow comes from government. By extension they also believe that society's ills are the result of greed and too much freedom.
Liberalism is not the cure for our problems, it is the cause.
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Tonight I saw a commercial that illustrates my point. Canadian Tire shows a boy trying to apply for a job so he can afford to play hockey. The message of the commercial is that we must step in to donate and help the poor lad get on the ice. It is a stupendous twisting of the truth.
Why can't he afford to play?
- Liberals and liberal lawyers have forced equipment manufacturers to produce expensive equipment in a futile attempt to remove ALL risk of injury.
- In case the equipment does fail, there is an army of lawyers ready to sue the coach, the arena, the league officials, and anyone else they can think of. Insurance against lawyers drives up the cost of playing all sports, and it gets passed on to the participants.
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The poverty story is the biggest single lie of the left. The professional lying left (politicians, lawyers, left wing activists, and so on) assert that people become poor because someone else has deprived them of something or other. To them, wealth DOES grow on trees and it is society's job to control the harvest. They also believe that simply existing entitles one to a living, even if one makes no effort to help themselves. One of my favourite illustrations of this is by Earl Nightingale, a famous radio personality from the 1940's. He once described the entitlement mentality as people who will look at wood fired stove and say, "Give me heat, and then I'll put the wood in"
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Why is there more crime now?
The left brainwashes the masses into believing the inequality argument, which basically asserts that poverty results from uncontrolled capitalism leading to "unequal" wealth distribution. They simply do not believe that anyone should be forced to work. They cannot and will not ever admit that people should ever be responsible in any way for their lot in life, nor should they be punished for crime.
The left has as one of its pillars the belief that bad behaviour should not be punished, but can be solved by punishing the non-misbehaving majority with taxes for endless social experiments. We have more repeat offenders than ever before because there are no consequences any more. The left has simply removed them and shifted the blame.
One of the saddest but best examples of this is the single parent family. Single parent usually means single mother, and in these families, the lack of a strong male role model means that boys (who as men commit the vast majority of crimes) have no one to apply the firm hand and be the role model that only a man can be to a boy. Liberals have exalted single motherhood to saint status, whereas we used to demand that men look
