One Is Not a Norm

To The Editor:
In a recent letter to the Herald, Ann Yenzer spoke of a conversation she had with a recent immigrant who suggested that government had an obligation to care for the people. Then Yenger spent the last half of the letter saying that it has become the “new norm” for “many people to think that the government should take care of them.”
Since when do we take the leap from one person to a “norm?” Does anywhere near a majority of people in the U.S.think that the government should take care of them? Do even a sizable minority? If so, they don’t act like it.
One hundred forty million Americans are going to work every day. They aren’t waiting for the government to take care of them. I see a casino taking applications for 300 jobs and 1,800 applicants show up. They want jobs, not the government to take care of them. I see job fairs where the attendees outnumber the job offerings by 5 or 6 to 1. I see the unemployed going to community college to learn new job skills.
I look around my neighborhood and I see almost no people asking that the government take care of them. I know some people do have that attitude, too many, I’m sure, but they are in a small minority of the people I know.
So, perhaps Yenger has a very different set of acquaintances than I do, Or perhaps she has access to data that I don’t. In the latter case, could you supply some data before you start claiming that it is the “new norm” that people now think the government should take care of them.
While I don’t have hard data, based on letters to the Herald, Press, and listening to the Republican presidential candidates, I would submit that there is indeed a new norm – it is that the Right Wing of the Republican party, the Tea Party-types etc. endlessly whining about all the people who “think the government should take care of them.”
Back in the ’50’s, the old timers said of us that we youngsters didn’t want to work. Well, it turned out that they were dead wrong. We all worked and we worked reasonably hard and long. Today, it seems that it’s not just old fogies who believe that people don’t want to work and want someone else to take care of them. The old guys have been joined by the Right Wing. In fact, the Right Wing sounds like a chorus of old fogies. That includes, it seems, Yenzer as well as our governor who recently made the old fogie quote of the year saying that soon most of our citizens will sit home on their couches waiting for a government pay check.
In fact, claiming people wanting government to take care of them has become a mantra of the Right Wing, it seems. A lot of complaining, but no data to support it. It would be real nice if either the Right Wing supplied some actual data or else shut up until they did. Complaining isn‘t the American way.
BRUCE ALLEN
Del Haven