Posted on 10/24/2008 9:07:28 AM PDT by A_perfect_lady
Last year I let a family member move in with me. I’ll call her my niece. My niece was down on her luck and needed a place to stay while she got on her feet.
As it turns out, she was actually down with drugs and needed a place to lie on the couch while she got on the phone. But anyway. I came home one day and was looking for my iron, so I could iron clothes to wear to work.
(“Work is that place you go to,” I explained to her, “and they pay you to do things for them. Yes, like that time you took the baggie to some guy named Raoul in the parking lot of the grocery store nearby. Rather like that, only more regular, and legal.”)
Anyway, my niece said, “Oh, I loaned the iron to my friend Rachel.”
I puzzled over this for a bit. She loaned my iron to some girl I barely knew? She loaned my iron to some girl she barely knew?! Would I loan any of her items to a friend of mine? Let me think. No. I wouldn’t.
So why would she?
The clue lies in the wording. “I loaned the iron…” THE iron. Not YOUR iron, Auntie Beth, THE iron. The local iron. The iron that existed here before I came and is therefore part of the landcape. Like the sun, the trees, and the street. Belonging to nobody, or everybody.
So let’s really parse what Barack Obama says to plumbers and other people who’ve done something with their lives besides lecture like a lawyer turned college professor turned professional pied piper: “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
I think the most important word in that sentence really is “the.” THE wealth. Not your wealth, says Obama, because it’s not yours. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t intend to spread HIS too thin. I have a feeling his daughters will be taken care of before anyone else’s kids.
Snide comments aside, Obama said THE wealth because that’s how he thinks of it. Community property. Belonging to everyone. Just THERE, like sunlight, a fact of life that we determine how to utilize.
To Obama, it’s not something that belongs to anyone. Not something you created, earned, or own. Just something that you somehow managed to get hold of, maybe by picking it off a tree, and now you need to share what came from that tree.
And don’t worry. That tree will always bear fruit. It always has, right? Well no, it hasn’t, but only the gardener who planted it realizes that. The lawyer who comes along representing the neighbors who’ve been eying that fruit tree doesn’t know, or care, how it got there. It’s there now, isn’t it?
And it isn’t your tree anymore. It’s THE tree.
To the point. Nicely done.
Great Point!
It’s not yours, ours or theirs, it’s THE.
Excellent story.
It’s the “entitlement” syndrome these people carry.
Such is the indoctrination to ‘entitlement’...
Just wait until those ‘Trophy’ kids have to ‘produce’ their own wealth without credit because it’s drying up.
Well done!
Grouse away - you make a good point.
As I posted on this thread Obama / Socialism
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2114179/posts?page=1
Don’t worry, Obama will not have any Wealth to spread around, the Stock Market downward spiral has a direct connection to Obama being ahead in the Polls... TAKE YOUR WEALTH NOW IN THE STOCK MARKET AND SPEND LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW.. because in a way, that is true if Obama is elected President of the US
Excellent grouse. Could use a little more cumin, though ...
We have the opposite problem in my family: items that really are community property, or even belong to somebody else, become “MY car,” “MY bathroom,” “MY flight jacket,” instead of being properly ascribed to their owners. I’ve suggested that the culprit get “your job,” move to “your apartment,” and pay “your bills,” but that hasn’t worked yet :-).
Very nicely put!
May I borrow THE iron next?
If we do not want to create a class of lazy people (Americans) who will depend on “our wealth” for life time. Stop Obama.
Sounds like the niece was eventually encouraged to ‘move on’.
I have a stepson like that. Very emotionally taxing. Very.
Kick the slacker out on the street. It is hard to do, I know, but had to do it to my oldest son.
I don’t think we’ll have to - she’s only 17, and doing well in community college except for Spanish. She plans to join the military in a couple of years when she has her Associates Degree - but she’s going to annoy the FReep out of me until then :-).
However, we’re prepared to change the locks if we ever have to, or move three brothers into “her” room while she’s at the library.
>Just grousing.
Well, if you want my free advice what you do is this:
- Go outside and find that community tree (or your own)
- cut off a nice, sturdy switch
- Aply said switch to the backside of said niece until she cannot sit comfortably for the rest of the week.
- Ask said niece what she did wrong.
- If said niece cannot understand her wrongdoing, boot her to the curb.
- If said niece demands to be let back in without properly apologizing, call the police about a trespasser.
- Problem solved.
grin.
Blue tee shirts and camo pants never need ironing.
This explains “That Man” in lieu of Oprah’s “The Man”.
...Not only is the wealth not mine but it’s not even “wealth”. It’s not even extra, or abundance, or spare. It’s what I could use to make MY life better.
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