Teaching Them To Fish - A Response To The Comments

Yesterday I wrote a post about personal responsibility.  I made some points about the current state of our country and it's people.  It has been enlightening to read the comments.  I do enjoy knowing what others are thinking.

As I said in the beginning I usually don't make political statements here but in my mind this statement was not so much political but societal. I expected and got comments from both sides of the political spectrum defending their positions and explaining who is to blame.   Some wanted to place all the problems on big business, some chose to blame specific groups, some had it in for the politicians but the thing is we are all to blame.  

Some implied or came right out and questioned my compassion.  I am a compassionate person and help people every day.  I do know that we have to offer people a hand up and that is what this is all about.  A hand up - Not a hand out.  Truth is that it is more than a few who scam the system.  Those programs that were instituted by compassionate people are used and abused.  We go around saving the day only to forget to attach obligation to the assistance.  We do it with our social welfare, we do it with our bailouts, and we have created an expectation of "rights" that people now believe are unalienable. There are privileges that have been available for years but they are not our "rights".  No where in the Bill of Rights are we guaranteed public transportation for example. There was a story one person relayed yesterday about of a person who was complaining about the loss of a public transportation system and had stated that public transportation was a human right.  P-u-lease!

Teaching Someone to Fish requires that we attach conditions and responsibilities to our compassion.  We expect that parents will learn the skills they need so that they can teach their children to be responsible, excusing bad behavior and not expecting them to produce is one of the basic problems of our society.  We expect that someone getting by on public assistance is trying to help out others and to rise above the need for the assistance.  We expect that someone who needs the temporary assistance of unemployment is out there looking for work and is willing to adjust their skills and salary expectations to meet the current marketplace.  We expect that people who are being helped to save their homes now take on responsibility for living up to the new mortgage responsibility.  We expect that corporations that have received bail outs use the money for improvement not to continue to pay bonuses for jobs that were not done well or they would not have allowed the companies to get in the state they were in in the first place.