Mindlikesieve’s entry on “anti” people (http://www.43things.com/things/view/341900) made me evaluate my own feelings on the matter and I think it boils down to this:
There is a deficit of “personal accountability” in this country far more threatening to us (in the USA) than the national debt. You see it everywhere in our society; television commercials that encourage us to “buy now, pay later” if we can pay later, politicians more concerned with the “misdeeds” of their rivals than the needs of their constituents, and welfare recipients (not all of them and likely not half of them) more concerned about their next hand-out than finding their next job.
Although many have identified this trend long before it became evident to me, this comes to me as an epiphany. Although I have never been able to rationalize it until now, I lean to the right, politically, as I have identified more closely with the party that, I believe, champions personal accountability. The other side of the aisle has, in my mind, pandered to the less fortunate by offering them hope in the form of one more entitlement program that will end all their suffering but which merely robs them of their sense of personal worth.
My own failings in personal finance (see my “get out of debt” thing) are directly attributable to my lack of personal accountability regarding the stewardship of the fruits of my labor. Frankly, I should be shot. There are starving millions around the globe who could have made far better use of the money than I did. Before you say it, that does not mean I will now support entitlement programs within which wealth is re-distributed from the “haves” to the “have nots” unless that redistribution be in the form of bombs and bullets raining down on the heads of tyrants.
I don’t want to rant all day but would like to add that if you are as sick and tired of political attack adds, protestors who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk, credit card adds (God bless you Dave Ramsey!), and the wealth fare (this is an interesting typo which I am preserving) state as I am then I would suggest you join me. Encourage others to sleep in the bed they have made for themselves but remember that perhaps the most influential argument would be to live a personally accountable life in plain view of others and challenge them, when asked for advice, to do the same.
