Can you picture a plank for the coming election labeled BYOB. It would certainly get some attention but would need to be explained. It isn’t for Bring Your Own Booze although the principle behind it is the same. It means Balance Your Own Budget.
I was recently at a wedding where the reception dinner would be held in a location that would have an open bar. We were wondering if it would be an open bar or whether the drinkers would pay their own tab. It was accepted that the results would be different. If it was an open bar and the drinks were free to the guests we decided that there might be a real need for designated drivers and possibly a few bouncers to keep order. If the guests had to pay their own tab we expected much more moderation.
Being responsible for your own poison tends to lead to reason and moderation. The same is true in society at large. Pick your issue: Health care, education, housing, food. When people expect someone else to pay the bill they are much more likely to spend. Until she qualified for Medicare, my mother never went to the doctor. After she thought of it as free, she lived at the doctor’s office.
We need to begin agitating for a Constitutional Amendment. We could call it the BYOB amendment. The thrust would not be about booze but about responsibility. We need to move our society toward people being responsible for their own lives and choices instead of gleefully allowing the government to take away the fruit of other people’s labor and ladling out the gravy on our lack of planning and effort.
Would we need some kind of help for quadriplegics and the mentally incompetent? Not as much as you might think. Americans are generous and if the government doesn’t steal their money to give big salaries to their crony buddies people would do what they used to do: Give to local organizations that they trusted and get involved themselves.
Does anybody have the integrity and guts to make this an issue? Not yet. Maybe tomorrow.
homo unius libri
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.