Say, that’s an original idea. Did you know there’s a job waiting for you in Washington?
There is NO shortage of educational opportunities in this country. Our society, through government, has established a K-12 public educational system throughout the country. There is even night school for those who did not finish high school. There are community colleges that offer remedial instruction, vocational courses, and transfer-level courses to four-year colleges. The only requirements for admission are, a) a body temperature of 98.6 degrees F, and b) an age of 18 years. The unemployment office has a federal grant program to train the chronically unemployed and re-train those who have been displaced because of job obsolescence, as do some employers. When I was unemployed, I was in one of those classes, and there were others who sat around joking and poking pencils at each other.
What about the individual’s responsibility to avail himself of those opportunities in order to utilize his skills and abilities to “participate” in the economy? The use of your God-given abilities is a mandate never mentioned by those who perpetuate the myth that there is no public help for the poor, and who favor an ever-expanding, never-ending welfare state.
Part of Catholic teaching is that everyone has an obligation to work, and children are no exception. That is not to say they must engage in paid labor, but to point out that their work is to attend school, study, learn, and do their homework. All children, both rich and poor, are offered immense wealth in the form of education, often at great sacrifice to their tax-paying parents; and for individual students, through willful recalcitrance, to squander that wealth is also a great social injustice. Where does socialist thought recognize that?
There are those who refuse to accept authority. We have all seen them: all their lives, they have defied their parents, defied their teachers, defied civil authorities, defied their employers, defied Church teachings. From the pre-school brat to the man who can’t get a job because he won’t cut his hair because, in his own words, “No one can tell me what to do.” This behavior his completely contrary to our Church’s teaching to respect legitimate authority. The consequences of such behavior are necessarily a low standard of living (who will employ a person who lacks the most basic skills or will not carry out instructions?). This is not to say these types do not need our help; but to blame their condition on a “lack” of social justice (a.k.a., “it’s all society’s fault”) is to misplace the blame and to commit resources to solving the wrong problem.
I reserve particular scorn for the ‘60s generation whose members, by their sheer numbers, sought to defy society, simply for the sake of defiance, by re-designing it after their own image. They are still having a profoundly negative effect on America’s concept of morality. Think of the immense human pride that is required for a single generation to convince itself that it knows more than all the collective knowledge of all of Western Civilization distilled down through 200 generations! Yet, its only accomplishment was to put a different spin on ancient sin in an attempt to give it respectability. The message of that generation to its members was, “You don’t have to care what others think of you; consequently, you don’t have to care about them.” Also, sometime during the 1960s, the American culture passed a “cross-over” point. Prior to that, individuals felt a need to “pull their own weight” and avoid becoming a burden to society, and consequently, there was great social pressure for individuals to work. After that, there was no stigma to sloth; indeed, admiration for the rogue who “beat the system” generated (surprise!) more rogues! They are those who, attempting to avoid personal responsibility, “mine” the system: the welfare queen who drew 32 checks from 32 different welfare offices and lived with her lover in a luxury home and had four luxury cars in the garage.
"In a quest to increase social justice, we must be careful not compound that which we are trying to reduce."
The U.S. military can do its job very well, thank you, with a finite number of dollars. There isn’t enough money in the known universe to satisfy socialist welfare programs.
You don’t know very much about Americans.
