Free Stuff!

Everyone loves free stuff. Who wouldn't? After all, it's free! At least that's the belief of 'Puter's eleven year old whelp 'Puter, Jr. This belief also seems to be prevalent among Democrats and others with an eleven year old's world view.

'Puter postulates the three following attributes of free stuff:

1. It's free for a reason. It's either broken, useless, dated, dangerous or some combination of all of the above. This is an attribute of just about any government "health and human service" you can name.

2. Nothing's truly free. There are always hidden costs. In New York, the gubbamint runs commercials about SCHIP (welfare insurance for children in families making up to $88,000 per annum), claiming eligible folks should run out and get it because it's free! Horseshit. 'Puter's paying for your lumpy self to eat food-stamp Cheetos, watch Judge Judy and spit out kids like a demented Pez dispenser. Hell, 'Puter should be able to consider your spawn dependents for tax purposes.

3. There's never enough free stuff to satisfy the lazy and greedy. See, e.g., every major Great Society program. Hungry? Have some food stamps. No house? Here's either a free apartment or a Section 8 voucher. No insurance? Hello, Medicaid! And, for the old folks, we have Social Security and Medicare.

Free stuff was never a problem for the Greatest Generation. No one expected to be handed a thing. Hell, they'd survived WWII or the privations of the homefront. Just waking up on this side of the dirt every day was a blessing. Everything else was icing on the cake.

The spoiled rotten, never-grow-old Boomers, followed by 'Puter's messed up Gen X stood this model on its head. Most of our cohort has steadfastly refused to grow up. We've spent six years in college avoiding responsibility, had abhorrently named "starter marriages", and moved back in to Hotel Mommy when we failed at both. We've never been required to take responsibility for ourselves, much less anyone else. And this failure of maturity has been corrosive. Corrosive to ourselves and corrosive to our politics. We're entitled, dammit! Give us what we want, now, and damn the future consequences.

And it's our inability to be mature, to delay gratification, to sacrifice for the greater good, that has put us in our current bind. We'd rather be comfortable slaves of the government than rough and tumble free men and women who take great risks and reap great rewards.

So man up, America. Stop being a bunch of wusses. Go out there and make your own way. If you're going to fail, fail spectacularly. At least you will have tried. And that's more than most of our cohort can say, as they contentendly live off the free stuff provided by the labor of others, eating Cheetos, watching Judge Judy and spitting out kids like a demented Pez dispenser.