Don't like entitlements? Don't take them!

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July 23, 2010

Anonymous staff The Tahlequah Daily Press Fri Jul 23, 2010, 01:33 PM CDT

TAHLEQUAH — It’s quite simple: If you don’t like government entitlements and want to complain loudly and indiscriminately about them, don’t take any yourself.

During this off-year election season, as usual, government spending is the buzz phrase heating up the airwaves and printing presses. The “party in charge” is accused of engaging in wasteful spending. True enough, but the party in charge a few years ago – not the same party! – was pursuing the same improvident policies. As has always been the case and always will be, ad nauseam and ad infinitum.

In politics, memories tend to be short, and elected officials are good at implanting false recollections in the public mind. The same people who are blaming the current administration for the BP oil spill brouhaha were outraged when others blamed the administration of the early 2000s for the Katrina fiasco.

That’s typical conduct on the national level, but does the atmosphere have to be this acrimonious on the local scene, too, where some of us might actually yearn to get along with our neighbors?

In a rather public setting last week, a local man was heard to grumble about veterans’ benefits: “They’re a bunch of whiners. Why should they get all this stuff? They volunteered for the military!” Though no one openly pointed it out, the complaining party has been getting farm subsidies for years. Did he not “volunteer” to be a farmer, or was he drafted into that profession? And he appears to have all his limbs and the use of both eyes, unlike some of the soldiers seeking recompense for injuries they suffered in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Just days later, at a similar function, another fellow began braying about “welfare queens getting my tax money!” Though there may be some veracity to his observation, it’s an odd one for him, considering he has for years been on disability (and rightfully so, as his body was decimated by exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam).

Merriam Webster defines such people as “hypocrites.” So does the holy scripture. Something about motes and timbers in eyes that we won’t go into here.

No one would argue the system is fraught with many abuses, and that politicians, and those with government jobs, should work to stop the fraud. The lack of the ability or the will to do so is what frustrates most voters.

But by the same token, no one should argue that a key government function ought to be helping Americans who really do need help. To do otherwise is to engage in hypocrisy as an entire country. When we spend billions to assist people in other countries defend their borders, pull themselves out of poverty, establish education systems, set up successful businesses and gain access to good health care, and fail to do so for our own citizens, what does that say about us as Americans?

We don’t want to hear that, but it’s time we did. And it’s time we took a good, long look at ourselves and decide who and what we stand for, and whether we really care about other people, or just claim to. And before we clamor for anarchy, we also need to remind ourselves how many of our own loved ones make their livings honorably in the government sector.

We need to do that before we shuffle into the voting booth in a few weeks.

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Editorials

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