Government

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."


A professor in a large college that included some exchange students noticed one of them rubbing and stretching his back as if it hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government. In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question: 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you p ut a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again, and you put up another side of the fence.


'They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in The last side. When the pigs start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they return to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America . The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc.. While we continually lose our freedoms - just a little at a time.

One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch; a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. If you see that all of this wonderful government 'help' is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want to send this on to your friends.

Gerald R. Ford
Address to a Joint Session of Congress
August 12, 1974

I don't know if Gerald R. Ford really did give this address, but I found it on a friend's blog and thought it was neat.