Fishing Pole or Fish Sandwich — it’s Your Choice

A wise observation from the American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher, Elbert Green Hubbard noted "Where parents do too much for their children, the children will not do much for themselves.” He quoted this revelatory comment realizing that parents who did things for their children when their children should be learning to do them on their own would be unintentionally inhibiting their children’s developing independence and self-reliance.

The same observation can be applied to our local and Federal government who should be less involved in its citizen’s lives and instead allow them to exercise their own individual independence and build their personal self-reliance. In other words, where the government does too much for its people, its people won’t do much for themselves.

The Government Is Not Your Family — And It Certainly Is Not Your Friend

Our government officials are not our parents. Our government officials are not our guardians. Our government officials are not our teachers. And our government’s officials are most certainly not our friends. Though it would be nice, if like our friends, we were able to trust them — but please don’t count on that. Our government officials are meant to be the protectors of our rights as documented in our U.S. Constitution.

The government is not the father nor the mother of its citizens, and it certainly shouldn’t be encouraging learned helplessness or institutional dependence. The government is not a citizen’s shoulder to cry on, nor is it a box of Band-Aids to rely on when things don’t go a person’s way. The government should be there to help you become you, not someone they want you to become. The government should be helping folks make their own individual way through life, not walking them through it. In other words, instead of giving out fish sandwiches, our government should be handing out fishing poles.

Fishing Poles Instead of Fish Sandwiches

While it seems easy enough at first to understand, let’s just make sure we understand what I am trying to say when I say our government should be supplying its people fishing poles instead of providing them fish sandwiches. The fishing poles vice fish sandwiches metaphor is basically saying our government should be trying to help its citizens become independent vice dependent; only too often of course they are not. This is truer with left leaning governments as they often believe they know what is best for you rather than believing you can make your own decisions. Let me explain.

Left leaning governments want you to forget they are in office to serve you the citizen, and not the other way around. They certainly don’t want you reminding them of that fact (e.g., look how hard they fight against term limits). In the case of the fish sandwich metaphor, this is illustrated by the government buying fish from someone who has already caught it, paying someone to clean it, maybe someone else to bread the fish, yet another to fry it in oil they bought from perhaps still another business owner, and then putting it on a bun that yes, they likely bought from yet another company (one which in all likelihood they have a personal interest in or hold stock in).

Now, after you get and eat the fish sandwich, for a little while you are happy. But before long, you’re hungry again, and you want another fish sandwich. The government knows this very well and is quite ready to happily provide you another — as long as of course you recognize it was them who gave you the meal.

What left oriented government officials don’t want you do is get a fishing pole. Why? Well, if you had your own fishing pole and learned how to catch fish on your own, those fish would be your fish. If you had your own fish, you could keep the ones you wanted and sell the ones you didn’t. Pretty soon you could catch and sell enough fish to buy yourself a pan, some oil, and some bread to make your own fish sandwiches. But that of course would make you self-reliant, and well, that’s not really what socialist leaning government parties and their proponents want. Instead, they want you the citizen and voter coming back to them every time you are hungry to get what they will tell you is a cost free meal.

But know one thing for sure my friend; there is no such thing as a free lunch. No, those giving you that meal want you feeling you owe them something: they want to make you feel you are incapable of making your own fish sandwiches — but you are, inside yourself you know you are. No my friend and reader, the real cost of that fish sandwich is your vote, and the price you will pay is your independence.