I am soooo afraid I may have to vote for a Democratic candidate for president this year. Far from doing so by virtue of any confidence in either of the contender’s policies or platforms to fix America’s problems, it would be more the decision of an “if-you-can’t-beat-‘em-might-as -well-join-‘em” desperation.

 

At age 13 I started working on my grandparents’ farm in Missouri during summer breaks. Since that time I've continuously worked part or full time but since my years in college I have never been less than full time employed for more than one week at a stretch and not more than three weeks combined.  I've held dozens of and worked as many as 140 hours in a  single week; rarely less than forty unless I was on vacation.

I was the first of my parents’ eight children to attend college and worked at various times during those years as a bowling alley mechanic, janitor, convenience store clerk then manager, grocery store sacker and checker and even the erstwhile gas pump jockey. (That was back in the days when there were still full service gas stations! Remember those?) In the summers I returned to my roots working for local farmers chopping cotton, herding sheep (the dumbest animals I have *ever* seen) and harvesting the milo and cotton crops around Lubbock TX.

 

Three years out of college I landed a position with my current employer. From truck driver/ equipment operator to crew supervisor to computer security officer, I worked and studied my way to an engineering position, HazMat specialist, service manager, safety and compliance coordinator and finally sales and service quality coordinator, I’ve held my job with my current employer for thirty years come July 17^th of the current year.

 

All told that’s some 40 plus years of earning my keep and I’ve always held to my grandfather’s advice to save something for a rainy day. Due in large part to my maternal grandfather’s wisdom and urgings, I began putting a portion of my wages aside almost as soon as I began earning some. His advice and my attention to it over the years have paid off. Far from becoming rich, I’ve managed – or at least thought I had – to put back enough to be able to comfortably retire in early 2009 at the age of 55 and start doing a lot more of what I want to do – golf, devote more time to volunteer work, pursue part time my love of the law through a paralegal certificate and travel – rather than what I’ve always felt I had to do – work and support myself and my family. After forty years of long hours at all times of the days and nights, I feel like I deserve it. That I’m *entitled* to enjoy the fruits of my labors and frugal decisions and to have the time to give something to society.

 

Little did I ever suspect that my plans would be waylaid by the growing segment of society that has, over the years, come to feel “entitled* to share the fruits of my labor through no effort of their own. Nor did I in my wildest dreams fear the government I voted for would legislate that those who have done far less for themselves are *entitled* to enjoy as much or more than I, the one who labored to earn them. Oh there have always been those who want the proverbial “something for nothing” and have neither the motivation to work for it nor the self pride nor integrity to care much how they get it or from where. Some such have become rich by rising to power in the Enrons and WorldComs and undoubtedly many who haven’t been found out yet (and oddly enough it is the government that convicted some of these after themselves writing what could quite correctly be entitled the Kenneth Lay Economics Playbook! Except that Ken took from the working man and just kept it instead of wasting most of it).

 

But increasingly there are those who simply rely on the government to hand it to them. Sadly and to me, shockingly, there is certainly no lack of elected officials willing to trade handouts for votes. Since these elected leaders – and I use the term only in the loosest sense of the word – are allegedly elected by a majority of the voters it’s not surprising that they attend to the wants and the desires of the largest bloc(s) of voters. This then leads me to conclude that evidently those wanting more *entitlements* from Mother Government have overtaken the number of Americans who believe they can and should make a better life for themselves by their own efforts.

 

It’s not right. It’s not right that so many of us have worked hard for so long to have to stand by and let government take what we’ve earned and buy the votes of those who want and feel entitled, simply by existing, to an even share of what we’ve earned. I have no malice toward helping to support the truly less fortunate. I would prefer to give assistance for those truly in need voluntarily though than to have it wrested from my paycheck to be disbursed by an uncommitted and inefficient system to recipients who, as often as not, are prevaricating, posturing and pouting to get it. True giving feels good and begets the desire to do more. Socialistic redistribution breeds mostly animosity and grudging contempt.

 

So Decision 2008 boils down to the question of capitulating to the masses who suffer some syndrome or other, some “ology” this or disorder that or one of the million other victimology symptoms we’ve concocted over the past fifty years to shirk responsibility (in the old less educated days we had terms like “slow” and “lazy”) or remaining true to the belief that we *should* reap what we sow and hoping that, at some point, the government will agree.

 

My heart tells me I’d rather die with integrity than live with ignominy. My brain keeps trying to convince me I should just join the throng, vote Democratic and apply for the assistance that will be there until they bankrupt us all fiscally and morally.

 

Unfortunately the alternative that claims to be Republican is little better with a disastrous foreign policy and no clue about economics.

 

Sometimes I think it will have to come down to “prying my cold dead finger” off the trigger, not in response to some gun control legislation but in pursuit of the revolution for honest government.

 

Ernie