No, that isn’t a typo.
It started as a routine trip to the library. Posted in a prominent place just across from the youth nonfiction section was a disturbing poster. One of the worst I have seen in a long time.
What a long way we have come, even since JFK. On the way home, I heard a delightful radio commercial for the same government website.
Getting a raise is hard work. Finding information for government benefits is easy.
Who needs to put in the hours at wages below what they are worth in order to earn a raise when it is so much easier to just apply for government benefits?
So go ahead. Ask what your country can do for you. And our republic shan’t last much longer with this mentality, I fear. We haven’t kept it very well.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.–attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, unverified
Don’t forget to submit your entry to the Carnival of Principled Government, due Thursday!
Oy! And the Carnival of Homeschooling, due next Monday!
Related Tags: government, welfare, firstgov, entitlements, usa.gov
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
The culture of “entitlement” has been going in and out of vogue since before JFK.
Consider the way that votes were won during the Great Depression.
What Americans need to realize is that everyone is entitled to nothing more than an opportunity.
Mimi Rothschild
The MorningStar Academy Daily Education News
You should have asked the librarian to take it down. She would have asked you why, then you could have TOLD her!! I’m sure she’s never heard an educated woman speak about liberty before. She probably would have fainted, though. It’s hard when it hits us in the face that it’s not getting any better.
Melissa
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/honeybee
If this weren’t something so predictable, it would make me vomit…unfortunately it’s just another sad story I’ve read today about where our society is headed that’s making me numb. Some worry that we’re heading toward becoming a Mexican colony; some worry that we’re on our way to becoming a country with carpet stores [for prayer rugs] on every corner…I say none of that really matters because we won’t care enough anyway–we’ll be too busy cashing in our food stamps for more bon-bons to eat while we sit around and watch Oprah.
Sorry, but I’m now officially depressed. This one put me over the edge today. Thank God I have my boys to snap me out of it in a few minutes when they get up from their naps!
Thank you for your comments.
Actually, the website includes a convenient link to contact your representative. Not that mine has anything to do with this ad campaign, but I seriously have considered sending him a note to let him know that this is NOT the mentality we want to produce in our children.
UGH! This is so infuriating. It’s scarier knowing that people read this propaganda, internalize, believe and live it!
This is what feeds the attitude of apathy. This is just going to get worse with Nancy Pelosi & Company.
When I see this, I just want to bury my head in the sand, but we can’t! These are the types of things I show my teenager and we discuss at great length. Gee, I just hope I’m not depressing him too much with this!
It’s true, these are wonderful opportunities for teaching our kids and yes, it is depressing at the same time.
I’ve come across people that do feel that the government owes them a living. It is absolutely the most irritating thing to hear them complain about having to pay $3.00 for their prescription, or about how they run their children to the clinic over every sniffle or fever demanding antibiotics. They don’t have to pay for each office visit, so why should they worry about what it costs?
I’m so fed up with what has been going on these days that I seriously feel a gag coming on. It’s just plain sickening.
Mexican colony? I haven’t heard that one yet but I believe it.
Of course that sign exists. And what better place than in a public institution such as a library? It says “This library and this country exists to serve you.” And that is the truth. I pay taxes and support the form and function of the government because this country does what is in my interest, most of the time. If it did not, I would not. I would instead rebel against the government and force it to support my interests and the interests of those around me.
Kennedy misspoke, in one of the most horrible ways possible. A country exists to serve it’s people. That is its one and only purpose. I was not created to serve the United States of America. The United States of America was created to serve me, and my fellow citizens.
The US was originally created to fight against the forced servitude to a country, England. That is what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution support. The counry was designed to support the individual. Why do you wish to lead us back into perverse bondage by the very country that is supposed to serve its people? No one should be willing to give up that which is their birthright: the freedom of the individual and the support of their government.
Headmistress mentions food stamps buying bon bons. Have you ever calculated what someone working 60 hours a week making $6 an hour earns? That would be $18,720/year. That’s before taxes and insurance, and already above minimum wage. Do you honestly believe someone can live on that, or that even a couple each earning that can support a child? Some people truely live in these conditions, and somehow get by. They need help, and God forgive me, I’m willing to help them.
Thank you for your comment, arccos.
But I disagree. The sign does not say this institution is there to serve me. It is inviting me to use government services that I may not need. Especially the radio ad campaign is clear on this. “Getting a raise is hard work. Getting information about government benefits is easy.” It promotes the idea that is is good to get benefits from the government, good to be dependent.
The US went to war with England not for forced servitude, but essentially over property rights. We were being unfairly taxed without adequate representation.
I deliver no one into bondage by saying that we are responsible for ourselves and our communities. That I have the right to possess and distribute my own wealth and not have it forcibly taken to be redistributed.
Our government is not here to support the individual, nor was it created to take the wealth of one and give it to another. It is here to preserve the good…defend us from foreign enemies and all that. It strongly supports three basic principles: life, liberty and property.
Taxation for the economic gain of a particular group of people goes against that and enslaves those whose income is taken to those to whom it is given.
And yes, I do honestly believe someone can live on $18,000. I’ve done it. They could do better if not so much were taken out in taxes.
And yes, many people do need help. And I give it to them as well. And when I donate directly to charity…or directly to the people I know who are in need of help, a much larger percentage actually gets to that individual than when it is filtered through governmental programs.
And it gives the individual a bit of liberty from the regulations imposed by the government in such funds, and puts a personal face on the charity, helping it to not be abused.
America is here to protect me, not serve me.
Whether or not I am here to serve America, is an interesting point. So long as we are talking about the ideals of its founding (life, liberty and property), yes, those are ideals I am willing to identify myself with and “serve” so to speak.