I Agree with Tea Bags

Let's not get too carried away. I will not be joining the Tea Party any time soon. Any group that has Sarah Palin as a keynote speaker is not a group that I want to join. But, as the news was reporting on her speech last night at the Tea Party Convention, I saw something with which I agree. Someone was wearing a button that said "You can't blame it all on Bush." This is what I agree with, but not in the same way I'm sure. You see, I also blame part of society's ills on the generation that taught us that we could have anything we wanted when we wanted it. I also blame the people that have encouraged us to reach for more than we need and the people that thought it would be good to teach children that everyone is a winner.

Earlier generations shunned credit. They preferred to work and earn money for something they wanted. If they couldn't yet afford it, they waited and worked. But eventually, we learned that credit lessens the waiting time. What was better was that credit allowed us to buy things first. I could get a new living room of furniture, new appliances and three more televisions for my home long before my neighbors or friends did. I then feel more important because I was the "Jones" not keeping up with them.

But of course all this stuff means that I have to have a place to put it all. So we learned that we need big houses to put it all in. The houses were so big that we needed more stuff, on credit of course. Not only did we need bigger houses, we needed more food to fill the cupboards and big cars to park in the garages. We got so wrapped up in the need of big, we even "super-sized" junk food! We learned that it was okay to take more than we need, use more than we need, buy more than we need, even if others truly needed more than we.

One of the ways that we learned all of this is because we learned that everyone was a winner. At some point, someone got it into their head that a child would feel better about himself if he did not lose. So instead of having a chance to learn about losing sometimes, instead of realizing that we aren't all entitled to whatever we want, a whole generation of children don't know what to do when they lose, don't know what to do when they don't get their way. People don't understand that instant gratification is detrimental in the long run.

So I agree with a tea bagger. We can't blame all of our problems on Bush. We can blame the people that have encouraged us to want more now even if we can't pay for it because we deserve it because no one ever loses.