It’s been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. Nonsense. The root of all evil is a sense of entitlement.
From the conquering empire builder taking over country after country right down to the mugger on the street demanding your wallet or purse, these are people who feel entitled. Entitled to rule, entitled to your money. The difference is only one of scale.
A con man once opined: “If they’re stupid enough to get scammed, they don’t deserve their money.” By virtue of his ability to decieve you, he feels entitled to your money.
When a burglar steals from your home, he feels entitled to what he takes; he would not take it otherwise. When a rapist assaults a woman, he feels entitled to have his way with her. It’s hard to imagine that a mugger, demanding your wallet, doesn’t feel entitled to take what he wants.
When a Madoff or a Ponzi takes your life savings, he likely feels entitled to it owing to his superior intelligence or cleverness. You have it coming, due to your own stupidity or failure to do your homework. You don’t deserve to keep your money. He deserves it simply because he’s able to get it.
The thief with a heart of gold, the one who feels guilty about victimizing others, is in very short supply. Mostly, they take what they want out of a sense of entitlement.
The sub-prime mortgage crisis that put a majority of the world’s economy into a steep decline was conceived by the Clinton administration’s sense that people who could not afford to make mortgage payments were nonetheless entitled to get mortgage loans.
You’d think then that we’d be teaching our young that they need to work for what they get, that prosperity comes from hard work; it is not something to steal from others. You’d think that and you’d be wrong.
Instead, for many decades now, moonbats all around the world have been teaching that we are all entitled. They tell voters: “We can have it all and someone else will pay for it. You want it, they have it, vote for me and I’ll get it for you. You’re entitled.”
This came as very good news to people who were afraid they might have to work for a living. Imagine their relief to learn that they are entitled to cradle-to-grave security. Naturally, they voted the moonbats into office in droves in most of the civilized world. The moonbats, as promised, created vast entitlements by law.
The problem is that the math didn’t quite work out as planned. The “they” who earn the money don’t actually have as much as imagined. Not only that but raising their taxes is a powerful disincentive to producing wealth in the first place. The moonbats hadn’t counted on that. They envisioned an unceasing supply of wealth to be siphoned off to placate the entitled. Worse, the entitled really took their entitlement to heart, and began demanding more and more.
When taking from those who earned wealth proved to be inadequate to satisfy the needs of the entitled, the moonbats began taking from those who had yet to earn. Governments the world over borrowed money, obligating future generations to pay for the “entitlements” of today’s citizens.
Not surprising then that this Ponzi scheme eventually came unravelled, as all such do. Governments in the sudden throes of reality find they must reduce entitlements or declare bankruptcy. The entitled, for their part, are not protesting the policies that brought their governments to the brink of insolvency, rather, they are demanding that the entitlements not be curtailed. <http://www.otfb.com/blog/?p=1180> The sense of entitlement learned at the moonbats’ knee was learned a bit too well.
The “Occupy” movement is born of this sense of entitlement. “We’re entitled to jobs.” “We’re entitled to health care.” “We’re entitled to college educations.” “Gimme, gimme, gimme.”
After many weeks of floundering about, with an eclectic list of grievances and demands, someone has distilled the “Occupy” movement down to “a protest of corporate greed.” But, actually, it’s about entitlements. Every person there wants something and rather than going out and working for it, they are demanding it. They feel entitled.
The “Occupy” movement is just a bunch of extortionists, demanding we provide them with various things and giving us a taste of the violence that will ensue if their demands are not met.
“What do we want?”
[fill in the blank]
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
As with thieves, looters, con men, welfare cheats and robbers everywhere, it’s all driven by a sense of entitlement. “Gimme, gimme, gimme!”
Update of March 2018
Following the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, there was a huge outpouring of demand, seemingingly spearheaded by children, but orchestrated and financed by handlers from anti-gun organizations, demanding more gun control. These kids feel entitled to be safe. I have no problem with that but I have a huge problem with their assumption that gun control is the answer. They need to do their homework.
Entitlement having been drilled into their heads for decades now, they demand to be taken seriously. Along the way, they’ve been taught that respect is something to be demanded, not earned.
When you’ve been told “you deserve respect,” people not accustomed to thinking things through might think that their ideas also deserve respect. Thus it’s not necessary to actually know what you’re talking about. Just demand respect, demand safety, demand gun control and the powers that be beter damn-well provide it. Or else.
A sense of entitlement continues to power some of the worst movements in America.