Mamacita says:  There are many things that are wrong with and in this country – many, many things. Open a newspaper, watch television, listen to the radio, surf around the blogosphere, pretty much all we hear about are the things that are wrong.

We SHOULD be hearing about them, too; if we don’t hear about them, we can’t work to make them right. One of the many things this country does do right is allow its citizens to talk about what it does wrong.

Making wrong things right is what we do here. It’s what this country was founded for. We’d still be a British colony if it wasn’t important for us to work hard to make wrong things right.

Any time more than four people get together for anything, one of them is going to want to do wrong. The other three have to help that one wrong person do right, but it actually goes deeper than that.

It has, sadly, become the responsibility of the other three to help that one person WANT to do right. Doing anything without understanding, and against one’s will, isn’t progress of any kind; doing anything without understanding, and against one’s will, is a kind of slavery. Uneducated people sometimes have to be dealt with in this way, and that is a shame, and that is also entirely their own fault.  Everyone has access to education in this country. Some schools are better than others, but any of them will at least teach a child to read if that child lets it. and whether or not a child lets it is the responsibility of the child and the child’s family. A family that does not allow the school to teach its child to read is a bad, bad family.

This country has always valued education as the means to promote the understanding that would help a person realize that. It used to work, too, until education was forced to include things that the family unit is supposed to teach and provide, as well. We are fast becoming a welfare state, and that is a definite downgrade from being an education state.

And why is the family unit not providing and teaching what it’s supposed to provide and teach, these days? Most family still are, but many families prefer to mooch off the government rolls. They have chosen to give up their independence and become the permanent poor relations, supported by those citizens who do still work. This was supposed to be a temporary fix, and people are supposed to be just a little big ashamed of being in this position. Welfare is supposed to be a somewhat embarrassing short-term episode in a person’s life, preceding a wage-earning job and giving a worker some income while he/she is seeking full-time work. We’ve removed all the embarrassment in the name of self esteem, and that was a mistake.

But you really don’t want to get me started about the self-esteem movement. I consider it to be like most other movements: full of the same sort of fecal matter.

Every day, more and more people join the welfare rolls, and for many it’s not the temporary helping hand it was meant to be. For many, it’s now a way of life. Some people believe that the welfare way is a right, and other people SHOULD be supporting them, sometimes forever. This was not the intention of welfare. It was intended to be temporary. It was never meant to be permanent.

An uneducated, or undereducated population is a dangerous thing. It quickly becomes a parasite, not an asset, sucking the lifeblood out of resources that really ought to be aimed elsewhere.

Ronald Reagan, who was not perfect, but then, neither are any of us, said “We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.”  In this, he  was right.

This country was founded by hard workers. This country has, as one of its foundations, education for the masses. It’s there, for free, for anybody who lives here to take full advantage of. To become an adult in this country and still not know how to read and write and support oneself is a disgrace, and that disgrace is not the country’s disgrace; it is a personal disgrace. In other words, if you do/did not take advantage of the opportunity to go to school; if you let yourself grow up without acquiring a single useful skill; if you allowed yourself to become an adult and did not learn how to support yourself, shame on you. I can’t think of a worse epithet for you than that. I know that shame is now politically incorrect, but that’s ridiculous, as are most political correctness attempts. Without shame, many people will never make themselves get up, walk out the door, and start earning their living themselves. Parasites are ugly. Parasites add nothing; they only subtract. Parasites destroy beauty. Parasites steal from others to enhance themselves without effort.

Those who are able-bodied and able to work, should work, for to take charity when one is fully able to do without it is a shameful thing. NO job is too menial if you don’t have one. No job is too menial if one is truly determined to do what is right. And what is right is to support oneself and any dependents one has acquired along the way.

Some of our immigrant ancestors were doctors and lawyers and professors back in the old country; they came here and took jobs as janitors and scrubwomen so their children could have the benefits this country offered. And since their children learned to speak the language, their job horizons were brighter than those of their parents. It is still so, today. Those who are educated have more options. They deserve more, too.

People who choose to take charity when they are perfectly capable of getting up and getting a job are to be despised for the societal leeches that that are. For every adult who uses welfare money to buy cigarettes, there is a little child somewhere NOT getting milk because there wasn’t any more money. The degradation of these adults is earned, of their own free will and decisions, and they deserve every bit of the disgust they receive.

The people who are the true citizens of this country, the true patriots, are those who made sure they had marketable skills and the ability to read, write, and generally take care of themselves and of others.

There are many people living here who claim to hate this country, and who work to bring it further down. There are people living here who rejoice in the streets when bad things happen to this country. I suggest that these people leave and leave now, and live elsewhere and see if any other country would put up with their whines and violence and gleeful reactions when others get hurt.

Those who insist on living here, yet reject the education, the opportunities for supporting themselves, and who feel justified in spending other people’s hard-earned money, are not the true Americans. They are parasites, and they are killing the rest of us.

Yes, this country has many faults. I defy anyone to name any other country that would put up with some of yours, or mine.

Freedom. Independence. Education for the masses. Rights. Responsibilities.

That is what we are. Take advantage of these things, if you have the guts and the brains and the heart and the decency. Ignore them if you don’t. That’s the freedom part.

Understand, though, that the hardworking educated population is getting very tired of supporting those who choose not to work, choose not to be educated, and choose not to behave themselves properly. We are also very tired of supporting anyone who does not understand that the right to swing his fist ends where the other person’s nose begins.

And those who claim their rights had better be prepared to stand up to their responsibilities as well. You can’t have one without the other, and keep either for long.

This country has learned many lessons: slavery is gone, discrimination is legally gone, although many people still have some lessons to learn (EDUCATION! DECENT FAMILIES!) Europeans came here to an already populated country and took over, without regard for people who had lived here for hundreds of years and already had well-established civilizations. Think how you would feel if aliens landed in spaceships and took over this country, completely disregarding your prior claim to your home and demanding that you leave immediately so they might build their culture on top of yours, and labeling and treating you as some kind of violent savage if you protested and tried to defend your property?

The point is – and I do tend to ramble late at night and other times as well – we made, and make, mistakes. Big ones. We must use our education to help right those wrongs, and help the nation aim for other and better goals. Learning from the past is what educated people do; dwelling on the past, not so much.

Aristotle said, “Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men, as the living are to the dead.” He was right.

Those who care only about themselves are not much good in any other circumstance. People who become accustomed to getting something for nothing become pretty much useless, too.

We must all get up, get to work, get cracking, get learning, get smarter every day. When we stop learning, they might as well bury us, as Lucy Maude Montgomery once said. (Quick! What did she write?)

Nowhere in the world is there any other country as free as ours. Nowhere else can everybody be educated. Nowhere else can we all go where we want, when we want, wear what we want, say what we want. . . .

In some countries, even if you have the money you still can’t have some things or go some places; it’s all about social levels.

If I said we didn’t have social levels here, it would be a joke because everybody knows that we do, even though we’re not supposed to. But here, our social levels are pretty much determined and evaluated by our education and behavior, not who your daddy was, or wasn’t.

In this country, we have equality of opportunity. If you think we don’t, you aren’t looking hard enough. Opportunity does knock, but you have to be smart enough to answer the door when it does, and to recognize it for what it is when you see it. That’s the education part.

Edison nailed it when he said that “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. ”

Everybody gripes about the state of the nation. You do; I do; everybody does. There’s a lot to gripe about. But I honestly believe that there is even more to rejoice about, and to be grateful for, and to appreciate.

If everybody swept their own front steps, the whole world would be clean.

I don’t mind loaning someone my broom, but I do expect him/her to do his/her own sweeping.

I’m glad I live here. I’m glad you do, too.

But it is a crying shame that so many people don’t do their fair share and expect us to do it for them. Sweep your own steps. It’s not rocket science.

Have a safe and enjoyable Independence Day. Watch out for aliens; they shoot to kill. I seen it in a movie oncet, with Will Smith. It were cul.