Choice, Responsibility, and Freedom vs. Easy Convenient Slavery

Subtitled: my personal response to Obama’s infomercial that he will, in a sacrilegious fashion, be airing on my birthday.

I’m going to start this blog posting by not getting right to the point. First, I owe the world an apology. This is my first ever blog posting, and I’m realizing just what a scary concept it is that I’m exposing the world to the deranged thoughts of my brain. On the surface, I’m pretty good at coming off as a normal old guy when I want to, but deep down, I’m actually a really crazy cat. Before we move on, world, I apologize; proceed reading this at your own risk.

Now I’ll get down to the point. However, before I do, I’m going to need you all to watch this most triumphant video below that reminds me of hanging out with my friend Jonny when I was a junior in high school as well as many other friends who seemed to really find something awesome about punk music that I was never quite able to capture. On that note, I’m still waiting for the reunion tour of the Sugar Donkeys – the greatest punk band to never even cut a demo.




To quote one of my favorite movies of all time – Billy Madison “Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it.” Pretty much describes that awesome music video…except for one part that I found quite inspirational while watching it. (At this point you’re wondering how anything in that video could be found to be inspirational – please refer above to the mention of the deranged thoughts of my brain.)

The inspirational part of this movie comes around the 2:30 mark as Mike’s friends break the wall open with their car and he runs away with them. As I was watching this the other day, I had the following thought as he runs away with his parents looking on in sadness, concern, and worry: “Hooray, he broke free of the straightjacket and the padded room captivity that his parents had him in…um, except now, where is he going to get his meal tonight? Does he have a job to earn money? Where is he going to sleep tonight? Will one of his friends let him sleep on the couch for a few days until he can get things straightened out and get his own place? Wow, he’s really on his own now. I’m sure his parents will never want to speak to him again, let alone help him out in life after he broke their wall down and ran off!”

So I ask myself, which way is Mike better off? Maybe he should have just stayed in his room. As long as he did that, he always knew where his next meal was coming from. I can only suppose that his mom was very good about bringing in 3 nice meals a day to keep him healthy. He also always knew that he had a nice safe roof over his head at night. He was assured that when the weather got hot in the summer, he had a nice cool room to stay comfortable in, and he had the same comfortable warm room when the cold nights of winter came. His safety and security went even farther than that. His parents were kind enough to put blankets up on the walls for padding just to make sure that if Mike happened to run into the walls, he would reduce the chance of serious injury. On top of all that, his parents were kind enough to put him in a straightjacket just to make sure he didn’t accidentally catch himself with one of his wicked left jabs. Truly and indeed, all the necessities of life that Mike could ever ask for, food, shelter, safety, and security were his, provided free of cost, and delivered to his bedroom by his parents. He had the good life; he never had to work, everything was provided for him, he was protected and he could sit around chillin watching TV all day with somebody else paying for everything he does.

On the other hand, now that he has broken free, he could easily find himself in a world of hurt in a big hurry. If bad gets worse, he could suddenly find himself homeless, starving, and possibly even dead. Yeah, actually Mike, what were you thinking? You had it made in the shade buddy. Everything was provided for you, there was no chance of hurting yourself with those padded walls, and you were just ready to live to a ripe old age in peace. Now you’re out on your own, you’re going to have to work your tail off everyday just to get some food in your mouth, let alone a roof over your head, and if you don’t, you might starve to death, freeze to death, or some other to death and be a goner.

Fortunately we all know what Mike was thinking. None of us would really want to live in our parents’ house all our lives and especially not in a straightjacket. That’s why we all moved out…well almost all of us…yes I’m looking in your general direction Mr. Johnson, and even you, who have chosen to stay in the basement a little longer than the rest of us, don’t have plans of retiring there.

Yes, there comes a certain point in all of our lives, when we decide that the freedom of moving out of the basement is a greater advantage than the ease and convenience of having our Mommy there to get a Pepsi for us when laziness hits and we just want somebody else to do it. Freedom is a great thing. If I asked 100 people today if they would prefer to live in a freedom similar to modern America, or to live in France as a serf 1500 years ago building Cathedrals all day under the rule of one of the many King Louis’, the choice seems painfully obvious. Freedom is way better than captivity!!!

Unfortunately, when the choices are less drastic, more subtle, and presented in a fashion just crafty and slick enough, somehow we are insane enough to think that maybe, just maybe we have found the proverbial “free lunch.” This guy is smart, he has found the way for me to eat my cake, and have it as well.

Of course you have all figured out the real life application I’m going to apply to this video (I gave it away with the overwhelming foreshadowing of the subtitle.) The particular reference I’m giving here is the reference of the socialized health care on which our buddy Barack and his trusty teleprompter will give us their best sales pitch coming up this Wednesday. We here in America are all sitting in our room “staring at the wall, thinking about everything” and we’re deciding if we want to go to the store to buy our own Pepsi, or if we want to take the easy convenient route of slavery and captivity, and just ask our mommy (that’s Barack for those of you who are a little slow to grab the metaphor) to get it for us.

I’m now making my egress from the world of logic and reason and entering into the emotional ranting and raving section. I love Freedom!!!! I don’t want my mom to buy any more Pepsi for me!! If that’s not bad enough, I especially don’t want to be so lazy that after she has bought it with her money, that I ask her to go get it out of the fridge and bring it to me because I’m too busy watching punk rock music videos in my room! Quite honestly, it makes me sick to my stomach to think that so many of my fellow Americans would be so willing to make this trade for the free and easy convenience of government healthcare in exchange for the terrible price of freedom that will be paid for it. You can’t afford to buy healthcare with money? Well, just pay us your freedom instead (as well as the freedom of all the rest of America) and we will make sure that while you sit in your room with your padded walls (reference seat belt and helmet laws, but I’ll save those for another post) you won’t even have to get off your lazy butt to get your own Pepsi. Barack Obama would be happy to bring me my Pepsi, which you paid for, while we both sit as siblings in our padded room locked up.

Every responsibility that we assign to the government instead of to the individual in this country is another measure of liberty that we have lost. We have taken the power to choose for ourselves, and surrendered it, to the Almighty OZ, who apparently knows better than us, which decision should be made, and is much better at deciding for me, which choice is in “my best interest.”

The star spangled banner finishes by saying that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. I think it would be equally as appropriate to say that it is the land of the free BECAUSE it is the home of the brave, and yet, I feel like the Freedom and Bravery, as a package deal, are waning in this country. It seems as though we’re not brave enough to do anything for ourselves anymore. We’re not brave enough to handle the economic hard times that might be caused by some big banks going out of business (even if we were brave enough, that bravery might very well be misplaced based on the average American household debt - my stupid self included), so what do we do, we ask the government to take care of the problem for us. The price? About a trillion dollars worth of pure freedom, and I won’t even get into the fact that it’s money we don’t even have, I’ll save that for another blog posting another day. We’re not brave enough to be willing to see what happens if the Detroit automakers can’t make their business run, so what do we do? We just ask the government to run them for us (“why don’t you go get me a Pepsi?”) The Price? I don’t think it can even be fully calculated yet, but I know it’s at least 60% of GM, and will only compound from there. Can you hear the freedom going out the window as the Government takes over GM?

And now as we decide whether we are brave enough to take on the responsibility of our family’s healthcare I want to make it clear that if you ask the power mongers in Washington to just take care of that problem for you, don’t worry, they’ll do it gladly. And along with the responsibility, which they will fulfill about as well as the government fulfills the rest of its responsibilities, they will take the power. They will now decide for you what is in your best interest on all subjects healthcare. Do you remember how absurd that idea sounded when Mike was talking about it in the song? How can you expect anything different? If they are in charge of paying for it, then it’s only fair that they should be able to decide which treatment you should receive, what medications you should take, and which doctors you can and can’t see. How could it possibly be fair for me to tell them to pay for it, but that I get to call all the shots and make all the decisions?

I remember I tried that once as a punk youngster. My dad said he was in the market for a new (used) snowmobile. Oh man I took off with that idea. I was highlighting the KSL newspaper ads every dang night showing him the “great deals,” making calls and doing the work. Then I found the one. I was sure that this would be the one he wanted to buy. It was an awesome machine and a terrific deal. You can imagine my confusion when he said it was too expensive and dismissed my idea. I figured maybe he just didn’t understand everything yet so I kept bugging him, trying to help him to understand what a great deal this was. Finally after he had to go to the bathroom with me hollering through the door at him with something or other about this good deal, he arrived at the break point and got really mad at me. The lesson that I learned that day was that if you want something, go pay for it. If you want somebody else to buy something, or to buy something for you…well, keep your prayers alive, because as long as it’s not your money, well the choice is not at all yours either.

How can anybody possibly buy in to this absurd idea that the government is going to pay for our healthcare for us, and there will be no sacrifices to make on our part? As my boss Bob Luddy would say “It all comes back to Abraham Lincoln and the free lunch.” Well Bob, I guess you’re right…I guess there are some people out there, over half of America evidently, who still think that magical free lunch exists, and they’re going to keep chasing after it until the day they die.

Bummer…but at least I got to watch an awesome 80’s punk music video.