Ask not what your country can do for you but, ask what you can do for your country. Sound familiar? John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address in 1961. Of course Kennedy was a war veteran, in fact a war hero, so he felt a deep commitment to service to the country. So I ask, what do you owe the United States of America? And based on what I'm seeing today, it seems to me that the population in general, with some exceptions, feels they owe nothing to this country, but rather the fact that they're in this country either legally of illegally means that the government owes them.
Every segment of the population seems to have their hand out pleading for the government to give them something. At the same time they protest paying taxes, avoid military service and any other commitment that might constitute a sacrifice of some kind.
They want the government to provide free health care, but don't want to pay for it. If they aren't making enough money to live the life style that they wish because they didn't pursue the opportunities (education, etc.) that are available them, then the government should take it from the people who did put in the effort and give it them.
Obamacare is a good example of effort by the government, read liberal Democrats, to provide health coverage for the twenty percent of the population that couldn't afford it, or at least choose to spend their money on other things rather than health insurance. Sounds good doesn't it. As a result of the act, the government has succeeded in providing health care for a lot of those people, but not all. But, at what cost? The eighty percent of the population that had health insurance and were perfectly happy with it, upon implementation of the act, faced an increase in premiums and an increase in deductibles. Many people found out that their policy didn't meet all the government's requirements, had their policies canceled and were forced to take on much more expensive coverage. To make sure that everybody complied with the provisions of the act, it was made mandatory and a fine is levied for people not participating. A lot of younger healthy people have chosen to pay the fine rather that buy the insurance; it's cheaper. On top of that the doctors are facing a reduction of payments from Medicare and private insurance companies. The payouts to doctors for medical care in some implementations is so low that it doesn't cover the costs involved. Patients go to the back of the line when seeking medical treatment. So the eighty percent of the population that had insurance now has to pay for the twenty percent who didn't.
Our armed forces today are all volunteers. The vast majority of the American people have no direct connection to them or to the events happening around the world. Very few of the younger generation (under 50) have any background in the military, let alone any combat experience in the brush fires that America has been fighting around the world for the last 30 years or so. After all, the last draft was for the debacle that was the Vietnam War that ended in the early seventies. The commitment to service that the average citizen should feel to his country isn't there. Why do you think that when the National Anthem is played at a ball game only the veterans seem to stand proud that they are Americans. Any mention of instituting the draft again is met with howls from the population at large.
People crash our borders and if they are successful in eluding detection for a few years they cry for amnesty and to demand they be given all the benefits offered by the government and paid for by the taxpayers. They owe no allegiance to the United States, don't wish to speak our language or adopt our customs, but they're perfectly willing to take anything they can get from the public trough. But the left sees them as political capital and fights to keep them in the country.
College students march on campus and demand that society give them a very expensive free education. The fact is that they don't even begin to pay the cost of their education now; most of the cost shouldered by the taxpayers. And what do they do with that largely subsidized education? They protest if an Army, Navy, Air Force or Marine Corps recruiter is allowed on campus. In fact they have successfully bared such recruiters from a few campuses in the past. They have attempted to drive ROTC programs out. In fact I believe they succeeded in a few cases. They hate capitalism and the system that largely funds that education. They study the liberal arts in huge numbers, which is tantamount to studying the teachings of Karl Marx and Lenin. They flock to classes taught by socialist professors who imbue them with the socialist version of utopia.
They have become the Easily Offended Generation. Every thing must be Politically Correct. They have a knee jerk reaction to any event in the country that involves a minority and the police They march and protest without the slightest idea of what the real facts surrounding the incident about which they're marching and protesting. Many times they have a legitimate position, because there are instances of police misconduct, but the protesters, for the most part, don't really know the circumstances around which they're protesting. They demand that the colleges hire more black professors and admit more black students. They don't seem to realize that the demand for fully accredited and qualified educators of color is in such high demand that is very difficult to find enough to fill the positons available, even though the administrators have tried. The only way to admit more black students would be to implement racial profiling (otherwise known as affirmative action). But, the Supreme Court has held that to be unconstitutional. The schools still lean over backward to admit qualified minority students by taking other factors into consideration. An interesting irony occurs in California, where the University has had to practice sort of reverse discrimination by limiting the number of Asian students at some schools. At the University of California at Irvine, Asians make more than half the student body. They're just too good for the rest of us. I wonder why there isn't mass demonstrations of whites to demand that more slots in the student body be reserved for the underprivileged white applicants who don't measure up to the Asian applicants.
The University's liberal student activists have become the greatest threat to free speech in the country today. They are exercising extraordinary power on the campus. Because of weak willed, or willing administrators, they get their way in to many cases. Only persons that share their views are allowed to speak on campus. A conservative voice, or a dissenting opinion is shouted down. They have caused professors, deans and college presidents to resign because they dared make a small stand against the reigning orthodoxy of the left or did not actively fall in line with their positions. They have forced many Universities to designate Free Speech Zones, where conservative speech, labeled Hate Speech by the left, is allowed; such speech is not permitted at any other place on campus. I don't think they ever heard of the first amendment to the constitution which guarantees that the whole country, and that means the whole campus, is a free speech zone. The interesting thing is, that the protests are almost completely without participants from the science and engineering departments as well as the business schools. That includes their professors. Science depends on facts and conclusions reached from those facts. If the facts don't support the hypothesis, then it is concluded that the hypothesis is wrong. That doesn't seem to bother the demonstrators. They seem to have a set of preconceived notions and they stick to them, no matter the facts and real world experience.
What is really frightening is that these are the people that are most likely to enter the political arena or go to work for government and becoming part of that vast bureaucracy. After all, the private sector has no need for the skills and education they picked up in college. I see a push for a growing welfare state, higher taxes, a shrinking military, an ever expanding national debt and even more oppressive regulations to govern peoples lives. The public universities of the country are paving the way for a complete change in the direction this country has traveled up till recently. One that made us the most prosperous, mightiest nation in the world.
