I briefly visited a ‘preparedness 101’ fair at a LDS church in Plano earlier today. They had several tables set up with different themes about being prepared. As I was looking at and talking about the items on the ‘things other than food’ table, I noticed a picture of a gun. (guess a real gun is not PC) A woman next to me said something like “If I had one of those, I don’t need to worry about being prepared, I can just go take what I need”. I responded by telling her everyone I know that is prepared also has one of those, and isn’t going to let you just take their stuff. It was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard anyone say, but for some reason it really bothered me. I think the reasons it bothers me are:
-It represents a common attitude.
-Even at a ‘preparedness fair’ there are people who have no interest in taking care of themselves.
After thinking more about this, I’m sure this woman didn’t actually think about what she said, and I believe it was not an original thought of her own. She probably heard this dribble from someone else and it sounded good to her, so she stored it away and repeated it at the appropriate moment.
Personal responsibility. It is a really big deal to me. The lack of personal responsibility is the source of a large number of our problems today. Don’t want to take care of your family? That’s all right, we have social security and Medicaid. It is someone else’s responsibility now. Don’t want to seek out your own medical care? That’s OK, Healthcare is a basic human right, so everyone is guaranteed that, for ‘free’. Send your kid off to public school to get a good education, because we pay people for that with tax money, let the professionals do their job, why bother being personally responsible for your child’s education yourself? Your neighbor bothering you? Just call the police, or the city, or someone else to take care of that problem for you. (you really shouldn’t have to deal with your neighbor should you?) Personal responsibility is the other side of freedom. Most people I know will GLADLY trade freedom if it means they don’t have to be responsible. Very interesting.
Not only will this person refuse to take responsibility for themselves and their family, but they advocate using force and violence and stealing from others in times of crises. People like this scare the hell out of me.
Like when Ron’s neighbor jokingly told Ron “Now I know who I need to kill to get food when the shit hits the fan.” Ron responded by telling the neighbor, “I would normally have helped you, but since you have become a threat to me, if the shit does hit the fan, I will have to kill you first.” The Neighbor didn’t know what to say after that.
Disclaimer: The above quotes are not exact quotes, but are paraphrased. I used quotes to make the statements sound first-person and conversation-like so they flow better, rather than having a bunch of he and him mix-ups.
Have the names been changed to protect the innocent?
Somewhat, maybe truncated.