Posted on 02/13/2010 4:19:41 AM PST by Kaslin
A winter storm provides plenty of time for thinking. Thinking about moving to Florida, for example, or why the county can’t seem to get my street plowed, even several days after the snow stops. But also about the genuine willingness of Americans to help each other.
In the midst of the storm, our neighborhood lost power. There was a real question when it might return.
Luckily, we have a fireplace, and a neighbor recently took down a massive tree. “Take all the wood you need,” he offered. “But it’s fresh wood, so it might be difficult to get the fire started.” So he handed over dry kindling and handfuls of chopped wood from his dwindling log pile, without even pausing to think that he might need that wood if the storm kept power out for days. A few hours later power was restored, and several neighborhood families gathered for an impromptu potluck dinner. Nobody could get to the store. Yet it didn’t matter, because everybody chipped in and we had all we needed. This sort of thing -- people helping each other and finding ways to get by -- is what America is all about. “The storm inspired an outpouring of ‘snow-munity,’” wrote Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. “Big snows always bring this out.” That’s true. But they only “bring it out” because it’s always there, ready and waiting for needs to arise.
Still, some folks look across our nation and see people fighting for survival in a Dickensian wasteland. Witness the series of TV ads being run by Joseph Kennedy’s “Citizen Energy.”
They feature elderly people abused by large, impersonal forces. In one ad, cancer “costs” a man his job, then the Wall Street crash “costs them their life savings.” Still, they “struggle on, just to get by. To keep food on the table and to heat their home,” Kennedy intones.
Luckily he -- Joe Kennedy personally -- is on hand to help when nobody else will. He drives a heating oil truck and personally delivers black gold (courtesy of the people of Venezuela and Citgo, their national oil company) to help this family.
It’s difficult to use facts to argue against anecdotes. Maybe this family really has no neighbors willing to help out. No church to pitch in. No relatives able to look in or help pay the bills. If so, that’s an individual tragedy. But it’s not reflective of today’s America.
Not long ago, to be old in this country usually meant to be poor. To cite my own anecdote, when my great-grandfather died, my great-grandmother moved in with my grandparents, and she lived with them for decades. There was simply no place else for her to go, and no way for a widow in her 50s to support herself. Today, however, a massive portion of our federal budget is spent on helping older Americans.
As columnist Robert Samuelson wrote recently in The Washington Post, some $20 trillion -- almost half of what the Obama administration predicts the federal government will spend in the next 10 years -- is slated to fund Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, programs that either exclusively or overwhelmingly benefit the elderly. “The budget is mainly a vehicle for transferring income to retirees from workers, who pay most taxes,” Samuelson notes.
Finally, though, there are signs that Americans are pushing back against the liberal idea that we’re all helpless drones and need the federal government to take care of us. And the Kennedy clan is feeling the sting of the backlash. First, voters in liberal Massachusetts elected Scott Brown to fill the seat vacated when Sen. Ted Kennedy died. Brown specifically vowed to vote against Kennedy’s signature program, universal health insurance.
Next his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, decided he would retire when his term ends. “Is it an unwelcome environment, not just for Kennedys, but for liberal Democrats right now?” anchor Ali Velshi asked a guest on CNN after Patrick’s announcement. The answer, apparently, is yes.
“From the countless lives he lifted, to the American promise he helped shape, my father taught me that politics at its very core was about serving others,” Patrick Kennedy announced in his going-away message. Many voters would respond that we’d like the government to stop “serving” us and let us take care of ourselves.
The snow stopped, and will eventually melt away. So too will the over-reaching welfare state. Unless we reform the big entitlement programs, they’ll keep growing until, in 30 years or so, there won’t be any federal money available to spend on anything else (defense, unemployment benefits, etc.). Politicians will never allow that to happen, nor should they.
It’s time to change direction, before the spending storm hits. Americans are ready for real reform; that’s why we’re finally sweeping liberal ideas aside.
The police chief in King, NC was running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off: No alcohol, no alcohol, close all the bars, no guns, no alcohol, no guns, did I say close the bars. Chief Snowflake-in-her-cleavage needs to take a powder and let adult men and women read this article.
If you’ve got Netflix, rent I.O.U.S.A. Scariest movie in the last 20 years.
HOwever, not technically a movie, it’s in the documentary aisle.
I know Netflix is very popular and I was going to try it out, but I have skeptics about it
Unfortunately, neighbor helping neighbor and family helping family is just a memory to most folks since it many now depend on government taking care of single mothers and 14 kids who have been taught they can’t help themselves let alone a neighbor in need.
We had Netflix, but cancelled after a few months because about 1 in 3 DVD’s we received were unwatchable from beginning to end.
My wife and I are retired and spent the blizzard days watching the snowfall and clearing our driveway and sidewalks with our snow removal equipment, a ‘74 CJ-5 Jeep with a Snowbear plow and a Craftsman 277 CC snowblower. When we were done, since we were dressed in our arctics and had the machines warmed up, we did our neighbors’ places too, especially the enormous berms the county plow left across everyone’s driveways. The little nurse who rents the place across from us broke down and cried. She had fought her way home expecting to be shoveling late into the night.
Sometimes you can do things that make you feel good.
Yes, the “thug-munity” and “dumb-munity” mindset has taken over much of America. We live in what is purported to be a nice, middle-class suburban area. My girls come home from school shaking their heads in disbelief at the majority of the kids who, in their words, “have to be trying really hard to be so dumb”.
btt
My husband and the neighbors who have snow blowers all do at least one driveway in addition to their own. And if I get home before my husband and a neighbor is blowing snow, he’ll come over and blow a path for me to get into the house. Neighbors really pull together here, too.
to read later
If they are unwatchable you simply tell report them as such....they’ve made credits for me and sent exras in my queue to watch. They have great customer service!!!!
Liberal ideas like veiled ponzi schemes?
Knowing how to drive in winter is not much help when EVERYONE around you doesn't!
My girls come home from school shaking their heads in disbelief at the majority of the kids who, in their words, “have to be trying really hard to be so dumb”.
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Amazing, that is how I feel about Obama and most of congress.
That's what I did. But it's a real bummer when you get close to the end of a real suspenseful movie and it just keeps flipping you back to the beginning which happened far too often. Then by the time you report it, send it back and get a replacement, you pretty much have to watch it all over again. Maybe we just had bad luck with it.
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