Opus 2024-108: It Is Never Easy

In his commentary on Exodus Dennis Prager makes some observations about the problem with government help.  His third consequence says this.

“It literally makes addicts out of many of these people - they become addicted to receiving unearned income.  It can be as difficult to wean people off unearned benefits as it is to wean people off drugs.” page 365

Although I don’t know the intoxication of hard drugs I do know, as a glutton, how hard it is to control my eating.  I accept the difficulty, but the real reason we are not able to get people off drugs is not because it is so hard on them.  The factor blocking their recovery is that it is too hard on the people who want them to get off drugs.

There are solutions for many of the problems in society but they require hard decisions and even more difficult follow through.  People want answers for things like drug addiction that will be easy, like taking a pill.  They don’t want the addict to suffer or go through any pain.  

Or take another common problem, Diabetes.  Type 1 diabetes is a daily struggle with no cure at this point.  Type 2 is another story.  Although I accept there are exceptions, the vast majority of people with type 2 diabetes could be brought back to health if they were locked in a room with a limited amount of food each day and required to exercise in order to get the food.  Again, I know there are exceptions but not as many as people would want you to believe.  There are also those who are so far down the road of type 2 that it is too late to recover by behavior changes.

It does not really matter.  The addicts don’t have the will power.  Their support doesn’t have the will power.  That is why Alcoholics Anonymous calls them enablers.

Life is never easy.

Prager, Dennis.  Exodus.  Washington, D.C.:  Regnery Faith, 2018.

homo unius libri