Making a Difference

Judging from the stories delivered by apparently drugged out grinning news people, and public service ads, school kids and gullible adults are encouraged to believe that sacrifice in the form of buying a new energy efficient water heater, marching with a crowd of people, or serving soup to soup line people is somehow more noble than just living life and doing your job.

The term, "giving back to the community" often comes up, as if anything you have was wrested from your neighbors at gun point. It is really a senseless concept pushed by people who want to influence your behavior or find excuses to pat themselves on the back. Because so many truly believe that by walking rather than driving they are saving the earth from certain destruction, and similar acts of sacrifice, the number of ways one can publicly and conspicuously show their pious community spirit has multiplied in recent years. Along with that come the number of ways they can feel righteous admonishing others for their choice of automobile, smoking a cigar in private, not having a new water heater, etc.

Those who "give back" the most to their community are those who provide wanted and needed goods and services honestly and reliably. Of course, they get paid for it. They could not do it if they were starving and on the street. That is not a bad thing. The general trend lately is to make it seem bad to get paid or to produce without specific sanction from some community or governmental body. This thinking seems happy and holy, but it is the devil in disguise. Most on that band wagon can't see it and probably never will.

The high profile people who make a big scene about their volunteerism and giving back are usually getting a big damned tax break and doing it on advise of counsel. Some are actually generous. And can afford to be. Voluntary generosity is fine. Forced sacrifice is not, and the defamation of excellence through the implication that the workaholic ace auto mechanic. who is honest and fair, is somehow not an asset to the community because he doesn't march for a cause or volunteer for politically correct efforts, is 100% garbage. To think he should "give back" to the community could only be the act of a people hating lunatic.

I've got to think that people who push these things never had months of hard 60- hour weeks, and never mastered the basics of simple logic.