And so the government comes in as the great equalizer. The government comes in as the great playmaker that’s going to make sure nobody gets hurt, nobody suffers, nobody has hurt feelings or whatever. You know, it’s not life. It’s not realistic. And it just deadens people, creates a bunch of walking zombies. You want to see liberalism on parade, take a vacation to San Francisco. They’ve got a homeless out there they haven’t been able to fix for decades. They’ve been working on it every day. They’ve got a new plan every month. Every plan makes it worse. The place has become a magnet for the homeless. It’s outrageous. It’s one of the most beautiful cities in the country. 
The people running the city haven’t the slightest idea how to fix it, but they assault it based on what their opinion of capitalism and the free market is, and all it does is exacerbate the problem. And they spend more state money, they spend more city money, they spend more federal money trying to fix the problem. And note: It never gets fixed. Because they can’t fix anything. Government is not part of the solution. Government is the problem. This is not hatred of government speaking, by the way. I’m simply giving you a realistic assessment. Look, it’s no more complicated than this. You live somewhere – small town, large town, rural, urban, whatever.
Just go to where you live, pick any neighborhood, pick any part of town, and you go to where the people in that part of town are largely dependent on the state government, the city government, the federal government, and then go to that part of town where the people who live there aren’t, and you tell me which you’d rather be. And you tell me who’s doing the best. And I’m not just talking about in money terms. I’m not talking about purely financial measuring sticks here. I’m talking about all facets of the quality of life and how we measure it.
You go to any part of these towns, and you’ll find who the dependent class is. And the sad thing is, in many cases, it’s not their fault. They were exposed to it when they were born; they’ve never known anything else. And they are not exposed to anything else because it’s thought they can’t deal with it. And it’s as ridiculous as some people saying, “The Iraqi people may not be ready for freedom,” or “the Soviet Union may not be ready for freedom.” Well, screw that. Everybody is ready for freedom. It’s how everybody is born. It’s amazing.
You know, liberals are constantly amazed how well people do when they’re just turned loose to compete. You can find, even in liberal newspapers, they occasionally run a story about how somebody overcame long odds to really succeed. And throughout the story is almost a tone of, “Why, we don’t believe this! Why, we can’t believe how this happened! Why, this is really unique.” No, it’s not. It’s common. It’s common. People overcome things every day. There are obstacles in our way every day of our lives, and some of us, fortunately, learned how to tackle them and overcome them.
Some of them never learned because big daddy protector is out there making sure that no pain and no “suffering,” will ever be experienced. I’ve told you the story countless times. Way back, early nineties, water volleyball party, Saturday afternoon up at Croton-on-Hudson, and after the water volleyball game one day, this 26-year-old teacher is holding court. We’re having a discussion, this 26-year-old teacher, “I think we’re pushing the students too hard now.” “Really?” I said, you know, not wanting to cause trouble. This is a big social event, water volleyball – big social activity. 
“What do you mean, ‘pushing kids too hard’?” “Yes, we’re just putting too much pressure on them. We’re demanding that they excel in grades. We are just putting too much on them too soon. We need to back off.” I said, “Back off? What age are we talking about here?” “I’m talking about seventh, eighth, ninth grade. We’re really pushing.” “No! That’s what you pile it on them. This is when they’ve got the energy to deal with it. This is when they learn how. You know, you’re letting the inmates run the asylum. You’re actually treating them like babies. This is the time to show them what life is really all about.” “No, I disagree with you totally. I think we need to back off. We’re just pushing them too hard.”
That’s the root of all this: pushing people too hard. All that means is we’re demanding too much of them, our expectations are too high. I want to tell you what. You want to get something out of somebody, shower them with high expectations. You go up to somebody you really love and you tell them you expect way-up-here out of them, and you watch them beat a path trying to get there. Far more than if you baby them along, and assume they’re not capable of this, not capable of that, can’t face this here, can’t face that – and they never will. So here we come. The big, giant federal government, when the Republican Party announced: Yep, we’re going to start spending more money, and the government is going to get bigger, whatever the people want they’re going to get.
Meaning, “We’re going to provide for as many people as we can because that’s how we’re going to get votes.” It is tantamount to never forcing them to face challenges; it’s tantamount to trying to make life as easy as possible for all these people, so they can survive on some, you know, below average subsistence, not existence. It’s just – it’s a sad thing, especially if you happen to believe like I do and that is that this is a country which features because of freedom the opportunity for ordinary, everyday people to do extraordinary things. And I’m telling you, it happens every day and if it didn’t, the country wouldn’t be what it is.
You know, there’s a reason why in less than 250 years we run rings around cultures that have been around for a thousand years or more. There’s a reason for it. We’re all humans. You know, we all have the same insights, all have the same brains, all have the same thing – but there’s something different about living in this country, and all these other places I’m talking about, largely are socialist democracies or worse, they all have low expectations of people. And, by the way, that’s classic liberalism, to think very little of people’s potential. To think they’re dumb, stupid, incapable. That’s what they want. That’s how you generate power: need and all these other things. It’s just highly frustrating.
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