tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3046628493283608233.post5531379075217282398..comments2023-10-29T05:29:58.599-04:00Comments on Right-Side-of-Lowell: Growing in Depth, Shrinking in BreadthUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3046628493283608233.post-79646414009658054052014-02-11T07:20:47.655-05:002014-02-11T07:20:47.655-05:00I think this goes back to JFK's famous stateme...I think this goes back to JFK's famous statement "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Or words to that effect. I think the media and the populace at the time sort of brushed off that axiom with thoughts of peace corps and other voluntary acts of service...which are needed and good......however, what I believe Kennedy was driving to was for every citizen to apply a yardstick to their endless lists of wants and desires.....and ask themselves what of that list could they do for themselves rather than asking government to do it for them. If all Americans would do this.....and do the things that they are able to do.....we'd have little need for huge government....and government could provide us the essential things that only a collective institution can efficiently and effectively provide. Like Defense. Instead, we are in the process of rapidly opening ourselves to being defenseless in exchange for comfort and personal irresponsibility. <br /><br />Medicare and SS are both unsustainable in their form. I am a beneficiary of both and I am the first to suggest it must go or be dramatically reformed. Medicaid should not even exist. Of course we can't merely STOP Medicare and SS but we can surely phase it out or morph it into something better. Generations were lied to by the FDR administration w/r SS which of course led to Medicare. The promises were as empty as the so-called SS Fund that the government spent long ago. So, we can't exactly blame today's beneficiaries for not planning ahead. They did. They trusted their government. They were wrong.<br /><br />To thine own self be true. That is a basic and critical axiom to follow. Only the individual can chart their course, and when you turn over the tiller to someone else, it is no longer YOUR course you are following.Nealnoreply@blogger.com