An Aunt and her two younger generations live in/about Vienna, Austria, and find their lovely ‘Edelweiss’ in similar straits; more folks in the wagon than in the traces. Her SNO was recently here and visited with me Ma, describing the relatively low threshold required there to achieve the 50% income tax level. A right proper work motivator, it is. Build an addition to your home? Sure. Add a 30% cost surcharge for government taxes and fees.

Don’t get them started on what the vaunted Socialized medicine has degenerated into, especially as it relates to treatment for his younger brother’s brain tumor. He and the Missus are looking to the U.S. and New Zealand for future digs.

Will we change in time to avoid the same fate? I think not. We are too far down the road of dependency and deviancy to make the hard choices.

Or, as Dick Armey used to explain: “Too many are riding in the wagon instead of helping pull the wagon.” Those few, those very few, who still labor in the traces are getting damn tired of their contributions being squandered on the unappreciative and undeserving.

Within 10 years, we shall probably see an epidemic of “going Galt” or some form of passive, and perhaps even active resistance to government tyranny.

Meanwhile we better get extremely active in the political process and throw the bums out before those riding in the wagon make it impossible and doom us all to a total collapse of the economy.

Dire, but the British story is from a clear parallel course to our own.

(sorry, sorry, I suppose I should have TRIED to resist)

Then, too, one must differentiate between the 1st decade cohort of boomers from the 2nd, and all that followed. The first decade’s worth saw the “brats” as a distinct minority–mostly red-diaper babies. But they had an influence all out of proportion to their numbers thanks to TV and the fact that their fellow travelers on the left naturally gravitated to the media and the educational system thru a largely self-selection process that no one paid attention to in those days. Now, of course, the left has almost a total lock on the MSM and academia and it is pretty much a closed shop. As a result, the general public has been so indoctrinated over the last 40 yrs by the constant drum-beat of leftist thinking from K-12 onward into adult life that the language and terms of argument of the left is the default position for the discussion of public policy and provides the conceptual lens thru which all too many otherwise apolitical people view the world.

Thus said, it is going to be a long, hard, slog, trying to row the Ship of State back against the prevailing cultural currents even IF the Captain and Crew consisted of nothing BUT Conservatives. Given the current make-up of our government such a reversal is well neigh impossible. The question is, will enough of the conservative passengers, aided by approaching stormy weather cause the “independents” to “rip the scales from their eyes”
(to use a favorite lefty phrase) in time to see the impending rocky shoals ahead and mutiny soon enough to seize control and successfully alter course.

Oft quoted, usually dismissed as a cliche, or not being applicable, or overly pessimistic, but Mr. Burke knew what he was speaking of. Every generation stands on the shoulders of previous ones, and what they have accomplished or provided to subsequent generations in a material, economic, ethical or spiritual sense.

What we have can easily be lost. Without aggressive, active involvement in the body politic, on all levels, we will lose what we have to those who do not make a positive contribution to our society.

I do not think it a good thing when the Peters robs the Pauls, and when the Peters have more votes than the Pauls. Any quess as to which way the politicians will vote? We have a truly amazing ability to rationalize our actions.

On the other hand, for possible options I do think of the Amish on occasion, or perhaps even trying copious quantities of Barbancourt.