Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Cream. I hope your week is up to a fantastic start in that you are able to achieve what you set up to achieve not only this week but going forward as well. In my last episode, I talked about the importance of checking unbridled power. We in our system have a way to do that. It's called the checks and balances of each branch of the federal government. I also talked about some reasons why people seek elected office and some of those qualities that people have that sort of motivate them to want to seek elected office. Talked about how power is not necessarily inherently bad, but certainly power does corrupt and absolute power does corrupt absolutely. Today I want to talk about the nature of independence versus dependence. I suppose, depending on who you're talking to, that there are going to be as many interpretations of what it means to be independent, as opposed to being dependent, as there are people giving those reasons or simply evaluating those two diametrically opposed ideas of the human existence. It seems to me that there is a micro and a macro sense when talking about independence versus dependence. In other words, it starts with the individual and it leads to a community, a state, a nation, and I suppose even the entire world. And again, there are varying viewpoints on what it means to be independent versus dependent. I would simply ask the question to start off with, and that is, is being independent or does being independent imply that we never need help? I don't think so. I think none of us can do everything ourselves a hundred percent of the time. We all need some help, on occasion, even though men oftentimes won't admit it, myself included. And to be sure, I'm talking about the ability to be independent, to live independently, to choose what it is you want to do as an individual, as opposed to having decisions made for you and being dependent on someone else, the government, whomever. Now, as a Christian, I believe in my heart and mind that I am dependent upon God, because he's the creator of all things. And so, of course, I'm going to defer to him and I'm going to recognize that I can't do everything by myself and that I need help. So I guess I'm I'm not necessarily taking God out of the equation. That's not what I'm doing. I'm simply stating that I believe there's a difference between living an independent life and taking upon myself to do those things that I know that I can do on my own, so to speak, the opposite of which would be that I am considering myself to be completely helpless and that I'm dependent on somebody else to do everything for me, including my daily maintenance of life, if that makes sense. So just as being independent doesn't mean that we never need help, just because someone experiences, say, a time of dependence in their life where they're just not making it and they do need help, that doesn't imply that they are not independent at various other times in their life. I mean, let's be honest, life happens, and sometimes we hit a bad patch or a rough patch and we need help. And that's okay. It's okay to need help. There's nothing wrong with that. In our society, we have this picture that's painted that somehow, if we need help, we're weak or we just can't do it on our own. And that's an injustice to the person who's going through a trial or going through something where they need some help. Now, that in and of itself is altogether different from someone who we might describe as chronically dependent, someone who is making the conscious choice to, in reality, take advantage of someone else or a group of people, such as the taxpayers, for instance. Interestingly, I looked up an antonym for the word independence. The antonym is heteronomy, which means being subject to something, especially a lack of moral freedom or self-determination. Based on the meaning of heteronomy, it's not hard to see why some people in our society want to shy away from independence. If any of us make the conscious decision to abdicate our responsibility to be independent or self-reliant, we're in essence saying that it's the responsibility of another human being to provide for us that which we should be providing for ourselves. Once again, there are times when each of us may need some help, but that should be the exception, shouldn't it? Should we be dependent upon being sustained for a long period of time or should we make the conscious decision that you know you know what? I'm having a difficult time and I need some help, and let me get the help that I need, and then when I get back on my feet, I can continue on living that independent life that I want to lead. Of course, now I'm excluding people from the dependence category, if I can say it that way, such as the young, the infirm, the aged, or otherwise, people who are not capable of taking care of themselves. Of course, we would be a heartless people if we just said we're going to abandon those who need help in our society. Of course, we're going to help those who are truly dependent and truly need the help of other people to subsist and frankly, to survive. Do I believe that that's the responsibility 100% of the government? No, I don't. I think that individuals, private entities, corporations, those who have the means to help should absolutely help and not put all of that on the government, aka the taxpayer. My belief is simply that government was not created, our government was not created to essentially have people be dependent on it. Now, again, it's not to say that there are not people who are dependent on it. There are. There are those who receive Social Security benefits, who are unable to care for themselves to work, and they need that subsistence. I understand that. But when we start seeing a perpetual need of people who can take care of themselves to receive government care and be dependent on that, that's wrong. I don't think that that should be allowed. And personally, I don't see the government doing a whole lot to crack down on it. In fact, the next time you listen to any politician or any other person of influence in the government, pay attention to how little he or she may talk about individual or family responsibility. It's almost non existent. It's extremely rare if it ever happens. Such talk doesn't square with the notion that from their perspective, the government, meaning the very person who you're listening to or watching move their lips, insists that it's their responsibility to take care of us. When any politician runs on a platform of encouraging people to be dependent on the government, then to me, that's the politician that I want to run away from. Because I know, and I know that you know this too, that my taxes, or in other words, the money that I work for and earn is going to be taken by the government to do with whatever they choose to do with. And in my humble opinion, giving it to people who are completely and fully 100% capable of taking care of themselves is the absolute wrong way to go. And it needs to be stopped. There's no other way to say it. It needs to be stopped because what's happening is that they are fraudulently taking advantage of the taxpayer, and what they're doing is they're taking funds that probably and most likely need to go to the people who really, really need it. Furthermore, there is the issue of race. And it seems as though in the society that we live today, that race is interjected into almost every aspect of every conversation that has to do with our society. And naturally, there are those who do believe that when I or anyone else talks about being dependent or independent, and the focus here is on being independent, that somehow that's racial, somehow that is discriminatory, as if to say that any person, regardless of their skin tone or their gender or any other human characteristic, has any less need to take care of themselves. In other words, we all need to be clothed, we all, and some need to be clothed more than others, if you know what I'm saying. Anyway, bad time for a joke. But we all need basic necessities to survive. We need to be able to eat, we need to have shelter, we need to feel safe or relatively safe in our surroundings. Those are aspects of living that I don't care who you are, I don't care what culture you come from or what race you are, those are things that all of us need. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. All of us need those things. How can talking about the importance of being independent somehow be discriminatory against other people? Now, obviously, we all have varying degrees of what we would define as success in life, whether that's living in a certain area, having a certain house, certain car, having the kind of money that we want to have to do the things that we want to do. My definition of success may not be the same as somebody else's definition of success. I may be content to have a place to live, a place to sleep, eat three square meals a day, and be content to then pursue my level of success based upon my needs and the things that I want, and the things that I'm willing to do in order to get those things that I want. Now, if there are people who, because they don't want to do, they don't want to lift a finger, they don't want to exert themselves to apply themselves and achieve more, then that's on the individual. Don't blame me or don't blame other people if we don't see it the way you see it. Just as there are varying degrees of success, there are varying degrees of independence. We don't all have to be the same when it comes to how independent we are. We choose the level of independence that we want. The point is that we're choosing to be independent. We're not consciously choosing to be dependent, to expect other people to provide for us. It just doesn't work that way. If you want to do that, then go to a country where those ideals resonate with the people, and good luck when you go there. Finally, I don't want to be told by somebody that I'm just not woke enough in order to accept and embrace the dependence that they seem to maybe think is needed in our society. I'm not a fan of this woke culture that we live in. To me, it is uh destructive, it is uh a counter to progress of any kind, and it's not something that we should be discussing as a way to make things better. If there are people who think things are not as good as what they could be, then let's find a constructive way to make them better. Let's not try to shame people or guilt people into feeling as if they're not woke enough in order to accept the things that they want us to accept. I don't accept it. I don't feel guilty about it. I don't feel like I should be ashamed that I'm not embracing woke culture. No. Uh I'm going to live my life and I'm going to help people, whoever they are, if I can help them, no matter what they look like, no matter what they act like. Uh it's my responsibility to try to do the best that I can to help my neighbor. And my neighbor is anyone that I come across in my life. And there you have it, folks. We've come to the end of another episode. And I have what is, in my opinion, a very excellent quote that I want to share with you. To me, it's a very sort of cerebral thought, and it comes from Friedrich Hayek, who wrote the book The Road to Serfdom. Much of his writings I often have to go back and read again, just so that I can try to comprehend what he's saying. So if you need to go back and listen to this quote again, by all means feel free to do so. He said this, and I quote, freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily recreated in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one's conscience. The awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others and to bear the consequences of one's own decision are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name. End of quote. So as always, if you can take it, you can plan it. If you can plan it, you can do it.