Typical "volunteers" |
When school
children were required to work in the fall, right before harvest time, in early
spring to plant crops or throughout the year to clean and beautify the city, it
was “volunteer work.” Nobody in their right mind volunteered their children to
toil in the fields 8-10 hour days with no water and food. We were obligated,
forced, and driven by large buses from school to the corn, onion, and potato
fields to pick the crops or to the nearby vineyards to pick grapes.
The towns
were clean and nobody sprayed graffiti on walls, bridges, or government
buildings. Paint was expensive and did not come in convenient cans. The
immediate punishment would have been harsh for such an offense. Law and order
were maintained with an iron fist; the masses and their children were kept
under compliant control. People were on full alert and looked around them very
weary when they walked in the streets.
We did learn
work ethic watching our parents struggle in poverty to pay the bills, watching
the elite live well and steal the wealth of the people. We were lied to with a
straight face that we owned the means of production but we were not allowed to
gain anything extra, the economic police watched us with an eagle eye and an
army of neighborhood paid informers. We learned quickly from adults in our
family that workers “pretended to work and those in power pretended to pay them.”
It was
important, my parents told me, to study hard, get excellent grades, and pass
the rigorous entrance exams to college in order to become like those apparatchiks
who carried around briefcases, did so little physically strenuous work, and
were chauffeured while we sardined ourselves on smelly buses or trudged through
mud and snow.
What adults
failed to tell us was that most of those carrying around fancy leather
briefcases never finished primary school. They had the gift of gab and
community organizing, the gift of frightening others into submission to their
will through dishonest activism that misinformed and deluded the masses into
the wonders of utopian communism. This non-existent perfect society was
supposed to have economic justice, gender justice, equality, and other pie in
the sky promises. But only those in power actually lived the good life.
People were
too blind to understand that such a utopian society cannot exist because humans
are not so altruistic; they are often lazy and self-serving.
We
understood on a basic level that, economically, there was no such thing as a
free meal; somebody had to pay for it. And generation after generation were
raised to believe that schooling set one free from the drudgery of manual labor.
People got
degrees that were often education for self-satisfaction, knowing that
employment might be somewhere far away in a village that time forgot. A college
degree did not necessarily offer higher pay because everyone was paid the same
low wages regardless of education. Nobody was allowed to get ahead legally except
for the elites and their families who stole left and right without any repercussions.
The
proletariat’s work ethic turned to stealing from the place of employment in
order to survive. If they “acquired” extras, they traded with others who also
stole from work. It was petty stealing, not the mass scale stealing like the
elites engaged in.
It was not campaign
donations and wise “investment” like American career politicians engage in –
they go into office relatively poor and come out wealthy beyond belief. Our communist
elites were people like us, with much less education, who stole with charming and
mesmerizing voices that lied with finesse; then, once in power, robbed us at
the point of non-stop nauseating rhetoric and goons with guns.
American
youth’s summer jobs are almost obsolete now and the traditional work ethic
lacks to say the least. Teenagers, experiencing
consistently high unemployment rates in decades, have been replaced by illegal
aliens and, in the case of adults making a “professional career” out of minimum
wage jobs meant to be stepping stones for something better, and demanding a
living wage, their jobs are replaced by self-serve computer terminals.
The American
work ethic was legendary. People worked long hours because they knew the
opportunity for advancement and prosperity was looming on the horizon. But
today labor participation rates are the lowest since the Great Depression.
Americans seem content to be wards of the state, on the generational welfare rolls
and handicapped rolls of Social Security.
Social Security
has become an entitlement for those who have never paid into it but the
government told them that it is their right to claim. Stealing from others? No
problem! Why work when the government is so generous? And they are not just
generous to American citizens; they are generous to illegal aliens as soon as
they cross the border or deplane.
Work ethic
or lack thereof is championed early by parents who expect their progeny to get
participation trophies and straight As whether they’ve earned them or not. Some
teachers also destroy any chance that students would learn to appreciate and be
proud of hard work by promoting them from grade to grade even though some of
them are barely literate. If they do fail students for lack of effort and work
ethic, society and parents in general come down hard on teachers for being such
racists and bigots. Accusations of racism and bigotry have become weapons of
mass compliance.
The
malcontents of recent generations have found work in a very lucrative field, rioting for pay. And it pays quite
well. The latest rioters, during the Presidential Inauguration in D.C. were
paid to break windows, beat people up, scream, burn cars, overturn
whatever stood in their way, and generally destroy private property they did
not help create. Under the Obama’s race-baiting administration, the job of
protester/rioter paid well.
Why not
destroy property and block roads, preventing honest Americans from getting to
work, ambulances from carrying sick people to the hospital, children from going
to school? Why stay home in mom and dad’s basement when you can become king and
queen of the street, hiding behind black clothes and face masks, armed with
crow bars and bats? How hard can that be? It only takes the mentality of a cowardly
human being without a compass, a conscience, a goal, pride, and without a healthy
and productive work ethic. It is easy to destroy but so much harder to create
and build.
Luckily, there
are productive Americans who have a healthy work ethic. Many still volunteer.
Nobody forces them to volunteer; as faithful Christians, it is their own desire
to give back to the society that gave them so much opportunity for success and
a good life.
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