Introduction

Having an easy life is not a human right; quite the opposite, it is a dysfunctional way to live. And structuring government policy to make things as easy as possible for people is simply wrong. Wrong for the taxpayers, yes, but more deeply and terribly wrong for those afflicted with an easy life.

That is the subject of today’s 10-minute blog/podcast.

Continuing

I believe that America is a unique and exceptional place, and that you--you and I--have an equally unique and exceptional role to play in it. Yes, you have heard that from me before, and you will hear it again. That’s what drives this podcast.

Your role, our role, includes knowing how to live so that we can learn and grow, and help others to grow. There is no learning or growing that comes from easy; learning and growing come from facing hard times and hard things, and succeeding. And only in that way. 

This evil, yes the evil thought process life must be made easy thought process that is being perpetuated in exchange for votes is as follows:

If life is at all hard for you, that is proof that you are a victim.

Victims need to be fully taken care of with money from other people. You know, the 1% and the corporations.

The “other people” who are being tapped for the money are the very ones who made you a victim in the first place. 

Don’t feel any need to stop accepting the money; this is yours by right--you are owed this.

I call this line of thinking evil because it traps people into small, dependent lives, lives where there is very little triumph and joy. These people cannot be developed in the crucible of life so they can contribute to others. All of this in exchange for votes. What else but evil can you call that?

We all learn more from the hard times than we do from the easy times. I don’t know anyone for whom that is not true. Do you? And with that hard times learning, we can grow and strengthen ourselves to lead stronger, happier and better lives. Yes, I did say “happier.” There is no conflict between hard and happy.

We all know that to make a muscle stronger, we must work it, and the harder we work it, the stronger it becomes. Our minds are like muscles; we must work them to make them stronger, and the harder we work them, the stronger they become.

It is only when we push ourselves, mentally and/or physically, that we improve, get stronger, and further prepare ourselves for leading contributing, independent lives. The corollary is also true: When we don’t challenge ourselves, nothing gets better. If fact, things get worse. These physical and mental muscles will atrophy. And we get more than a touch lazy in the process.

Life is bad enough when we don’t challenge ourselves, when we don’t take responsibility for getting through the hard times. We are hurting ourselves and those around us. As bad as that is, it is far worse when powerful voices in leadership tell us that if things are hard, that not only is it proof that things are unfair, but that someone else is responsible for getting us through the hard bits. Why is it their responsibility? Because, we are told, they are the ones who made it hard for us in the first place. That’s the reason that identity politics were dreamt up in the first place, and are so often in the news. The idea is to relieve certain groups, those victimized by other groups, of responsibility while placing the blame and the responsibility on the groups who are said to have created the victims in the first place. This is called intersectionality. I call it identity group wars. Wars where only politicians win, and everyone else loses.

Remember the part about how we learn much more from our hard times than we do from the easy ones? The only thing that we learn from someone else easing our hard times by being...