Humanity Requires Personal Responsibility

By Author: Rob Thomas
Total Articles: 4762
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Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was a day laborer from Guatemala who came to the United States in order to provide for his family back in Guatemala. To get to the U.S., he walked across Mexico. The journey was long and difficult, but worse things waited for him at the end of his journey. Hugo arrived in New York but was unable to find sufficient work and was homeless. Even then though, Hugo did not lose his humanity or his pride. His pride came out when he refused to tell his family that he was homeless, preferring to live on the streets than to accept their help. His humanity, however, had much larger consequences.

Hugo witnessed a man attack a woman on the street in Queens. He intervened to protect the woman, who ran off. Her attacker stabbed Hugo and Hugo was incapacitated. He then bled to death slowly, taking over an hour to die as numerous New Yorkers passed him on the street -- laying in a pool of his own blood. Security camera footage shows these people walking by, including one voyeur who even stopped to take a picture of the dying man with his cell phone camera.

Americans, particularly urban Americans, have been ...
... trained since the 1930's that nothing is their responsibility and everything is the government's responsibility. We have been propagandized into helplessness -- to the point where we won't even help a man bleeding to death on a city street.

When we lose our jobs, we don't say "I had better find another job!" Instead, we say "The government had better give me my unemployment check!" When we can't pay our mortgages, we don't say "I should not have bought such an expensive house; I had better trade down to something I can afford." Instead we say "The government needs to pay my mortgage." When we see crime on the street we don't say "I must do something about this." Instead we say "The government must do something about this."

This learned helplessness is profoundly unAmerican and is the result of socialist propaganda. The government is nobody but us. The government isn't bigger or more powerful than us, it's just a small subset of us. We as a nation are much more powerful than our government.

The government can't make money and power appear magically out of thin air. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch (TANSTAAFL). Welfare checks come out of our own pockets. This is true whether the welfare checks go to individuals, to governmental parasites like ACORN, or to massive corporate welfare recipients like Goldman Sachs.

In much the same way, the government also can't help every bleeding person on the street -- we have to. It would have taken only one real American to save the life of Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, but there were not to be found. Instead, he died surrounded by people who have been raised to be so dependent upon government that they are no longer able to act on their own. They have become barely recognizable as humans -- certainly not as adult humans. This is the legacy of socialism. This is the legacy of FDR's "New Deal", LBJ's "Great Society", and Barack Obama's dreamy campaign for hope.

If we are to save our nation, we much break out of this mindset. We must grow up and take responsibility back from the government, and we have to force other Americans to do the same. As Benjamin Franklin wisely said "I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." We must quit subsidizing laziness and poverty and start building a world were such behavior is not taxpayer-funded. We must force Americans to stand again on their own two feet. This is not an unreasonable expectation. By creating a society where people can "live" without responsibility for themselves we have effectively stolen from them a huge portion of their humanity. We have created a society not of men, but of children.

It is these children who were afraid to help a poor dying man on the street, laying in a pool of blood as life slowly drained from his body.
About Author:
Rob Thomas writes for Ft. Liberty and helps maintain Quotes on Liberty.