Americans are Made of Sterner Stuff than Our European Cousins

I never thought I’d say this but, I disagree with Mark Steyn. Profoundly. He writes:

On the matter of Paul Rahe vs Mark Steyn raised yesterday, a couple of reactions. First:

With our near-permanent welfare class and a generation of kids who’ve been told that they are children into their late 20’s, I cannot imagine a prolonged revolt against Obamacare... When the outrage wanes, a lot of people are going to tell themselves that, well, if the government is giving things away, they might as well get in on it.

Second:

Plus there's the Katrina Culture. Did any of those "Help Us" types waiting on the "gubmit" to rescue them look capable of crossing the Delaware to you? They'd have been more inclined to steal Washington's boots.

Congressman Paul Ryan writes:

...In 2004, 20 percent of US households were getting about 75 percent of their income from the federal government.

In other words, one out of five families in America is already government dependent. Another 20 percent were receiving almost 40 percent of their income from federal programs, so another one in five has become government reliant for their livelihood.

All told, 60 percent - three out of five households in America - were receiving more government benefits and services (in dollar value) than they were paying back in taxes.

That is not the demographic profile of the 13 colonies.

It's not only a numbers game. Even in the 13 colonies, a majority of people were not of an actively "revolutionary" disposition. In the last 40 years, the left didn't hollow out every important American institution from the grade school to Hollywood because they represented mass opinion, but because they wanted it the most. The question is whether opponents of Obama's dependency culture are up to their own "long march".

Look, I’ll be the first to admit that we screwed up. I am including myself in that “we”. Card carrying, life long Republicans who espoused small government, less regulation, lower taxes, yada, yada, sat on our ever widening tushies while government grew and in turn, regulated and taxed the holy snot out of us. No excuses.

But, as Rahe points out (at the link) we are not EuroWeenies. It took a lot but we have seen the direction our government is going in and we are not buying tickets for that bus.

Keep our kids on our insurance until they turn 26? Please. By age twenty-six we expect our “children” to be adults. Yeah, those first few weeks when they leave are rough. Six months later we’ve changed the locks.

Katrina is not indicative of the citizens in this country as a whole. Have you heard about Charly, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne? Not so much? That’s because when those four hurricanes came in back to back and pounded Florida one after another we took care of ourselves and we took care of each other. Think of the devastating floods we had. Do you hear about them months, let alone years later? No. The citizens of New Orleans may not be up to crossing the Delaware but those of us who haven’t spent our entire existence sucking on the government’s teat damn well are.

The people in New Orleans waited for the government to rescue them while buses sat unused and eventually flooded. No one else in this country aspires to that.

It was pretty darned easy getting in to this mess and it’ll be pretty darned hard getting out. But we will get out. Remember, we left Europe for a reason.