Erasing The Lessons Of History

It has been said many times that those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.  Put another way, though human error is a consequence of our flawed nature, repeating errors is a consequence of our inattention to unmistakable evidence of our flawed nature.  Unless of course we repeat errors by design.

This morning I received an email.  It purported to be a forwarded copy of something written by a "21 year old female who gets it."  What is attributed to this unnamed 21 year old female is her solution to the "social welfare, big government state she is forced to live in".  Here is her message:

PUT ME IN CHARGE . . .

Put me in charge of food stamps. I'd get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho's, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I'd do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal legations. Then, we'll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, or smoke, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks?  You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair.  Your home" will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a "government" job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the "common good."

Before you write that I've violated someone's rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be "demeaning" and ruin their "self esteem," consider that it wasn't that long ago that taking someone else's money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people's mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

AND While you are on Gov't subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes, that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov't welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.

The sender then concluded the email with this: "We need to find this woman and put HER on the ballot this fall".

I rarely respond to these things, but since the sender had apparently distributed this pretty widely, I took the opportunity to click "reply to all" with this response:

Thanks for sending this.  I consider myself a conservative, and you a friend, so I’d like to take something in this email purportedly from a young woman, and challenge everyone who reads it to think about something.

In it she says this:

“Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks?  You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair.  Your home" will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a "government" job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the "common good."

In tough economic times when people are teetering on the verge of panic, tough talk like this can be attractive.  But please look closely at what she says and tell me what images come to mind.

First of all, one person is in charge of the rest of us.  We live in barracks, our homes are subject to inspection at any time, our possessions subject to being inventoried.

If we cannot find work, we will be required to report to a “government” job, chosen for us by the government which will sell our possessions and take our money for the “common good”.

Oh, I know, I didn’t point out that in her email the young lady wasn’t talking about you and me, but rather “those people” on welfare.

Hardship delivered on the winds of crisis are sometimes not of our own making, and avoiding it beyond our control.  “Those people” could just as easily be you and me or someone we love, in an instant. And even if not, I do not accept her premise that people be treated differently based upon their economic circumstances.

I would encourage anyone who receives this email to think carefully about the kind of world this young person thinks will be our salvation.

 I disagree with her vision, I am frightened that we could allow the next generation of Americans to get by with thinking these things and I feel compelled to speak out.

 I’m sorry if you think I’m picking on you, I’m not.  I just wanted to use this opportunity to ask people to stop and think about where we could be headed.

I learned a very hard lesson at a very young age:  We are not only responsible for our own actions, but we are also responsible for each other.  I write this because I care what you think.

Thank you.

Why did I choose to respond to all of these folks?  In part because I am concerned that if in fact some 21 year olds who have probably almost concluded their formal educations think this way, then we have utterly failed them.

And though it is no comfort to realize it, we are not alone:

One in five young Germans has no idea that Auschwitz was a Nazi death camp, a poll released Wednesday showed, two days ahead of Holocaust memorial day. [HurriyetDailyNews]

If those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, then the avoidance of making repetitive mistakes is tied directly to what one learns, which flows from what one it taught.

You might think that avoiding mistakes would be everybody's goal.  But it is not.  Some who would like to repeat history have positioned their kind as teachers who can erase history from the minds of a whole generation merely by not teaching it.

It is our responsibility to correct this error before it is too late.

Comments

[K Elaine]

Once there was a thoughtful history professor and he explained to me that history does in fact repeat. He said in a way so matter of fact, I was very embarassed that he was scolding me for saying we needed to prevent this repetition. After about ten more years, then I understood what he was trying to say in that some of us will be asked to be on the watch, listen for the warnings, and if need be, shout from the rooftops.