Patriot Update

Historically the American dream meant working hard and smart to turn opportunity into prosperity.  Unfortunately, the entitlement mentality that is being nurtured by the left is turning the traditional American dream into a nightmare.  Encouraged by class warfare and the politics of envy, entitled “victims” have created a new American dream: to prosper from the hard work of others.  The new American dream is really nothing more than government coerced income redistribution.  Rather than work hard and smart in an attempt to prosper, entitled Americans want you to work hard and prosper so the government can take what is yours and give it to them.  President Obama calls this forced income redistribution “fairness.”

Leftist economic policies in the form of government bailouts, handouts, and entitlements are undermining America’s economic freedom, entrepreneurial spirit, and traditional work ethic.  President Obama’s determination to create a constituency of permanently poor but entitled voters who view themselves as victims is undermining such traditional American values as thrift, diligence, self-reliance, self-discipline, responsibility, accountability, deferred gratification, and hard work.  With Barack Obama and liberals in Congress pulling the strings, young Americans are being conditioned to expect government to provide for all their needs and to hand them on a silver platter the success that preceding generations had to work long, hard, and smart to achieve.  If this trend is not reversed, America is destined to go the way of Greece, Portugal, and Spain—once powerful nations now burdened with second-tier socialist economies that cannot possibly meet the ever-growing demands of their entitled populations.

Many Americans who voted for Barack Obama are finally beginning to realize that what conservatives warned them about is true.  With deceitful promises he never intended to keep, murky slogans, a stimulus plan that did not stimulate, and bailouts that were really handouts, President Obama lured gullible Americans down a one-way street to disaster. In the process, he turned a national debt that was already dangerously high into a mountain that may be insurmountable.  As a result, the next president will come into office with America teetering on the brink of insolvency.  There has never been a time when America needed a president who believes in the values of thrift, diligence, self-reliance, self-discipline, responsibility, accountability, deferred gratification, and hard work more than now.

The American dream has always been about opportunity.  It is not about living off the largesse of productive people, winning the lottery, or making a fortune by suing someone with big pockets.  It is not about the government legalizing theft in the name of income distribution.  It is still about opportunity—the opportunity to succeed or to fail trying.  To get Americans back to this mindset will require re-establishing the values on which this country was built: thrift, diligence, self-reliance, responsibility, accountability, deferred gratification, and hard work.