Class experiment is evidence: Folks want something for nothing

By David McElroy · February 25, 2012

What does “the American Dream” mean to you? When I was growing up, I saw it as the opportunity that everyone had to build a better life for himself. We defined it as having a comfortable, affluent life and a happy family, but it was very definitely an opportunity — a chance to create a Horatio Alger story in real life.

Today, the idea that poor people can raise themselves out of poverty and into middle-class security and comfort through their own work and determination is considered a myth by many, especially those on the progressive left. They believe that those born into poverty can’t do anything about it. They believe that someone has to give something to those people or they’ll never have anything. The people who believe this have spent most of the last hundred years slowly getting that idea into the public consciousness.

Jack Chambless is an economics professor at Valencia College in Orlando. On the first day of class last fall, he asked 180 students to take 10 minutes to write an essay about what the American Dream was to them and what they expected the federal government to do to help them achieve what they wanted. The results were frustrating, but not surprising.

They all pretty much wanted families, good jobs, houses and money to have comfortable lives. There was nothing surprising there. But when it came to what they expected from the government, the vast majority wanted something for nothing. Among the samples Chambless quotes in his article about the experiment:

“pay for my tuition”
“provide me with a job”
“give me money for a house”
“make sure I get free health care”
“pay for my retirement”
“raise taxes on rich people so that I can have more money”

In other words, most of these students expect other people to give them things. They want something for nothing.

We have a very basic economic and social conflict in this country today. One side believes that everyone has a right to live his own life and to enjoy the benefits of his actions and also pay the price of his decisions. The other side sees most people as passive creatures who can’t be anything, do anything or have anything unless the state takes something away from someone else and gives it to them. It’s the second group who have increasingly established the norms and set the philosophy for our society. They’ve controlled the ideas behind education. The results have been teachers, lawyers, politicians, ministers and other people in positions of influence who have slowly shaped the opinions you see in this survey.

In an interview with Fox News — which you can see below — Chambless said that roughly 10 percent of the students answered that they didn’t want or expect anything from the government, which is what I’ve been telling you is roughly the percentage of people in our society with libertarian ideas. To that 10 percent — and to most of us here — it’s immoral to take from some people against their will and give it to others. The fact that we’re in such a minority is why we will never have a free society through the election process. Even if you believe the majoritarian system is moral — which I don’t — people don’t want what we want.

If you believe that other people owe you something, you’re a moocher. Whether you realize it or not, what you want is theft, no matter what high-minded words you use to describe it instead.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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