It’s amazing how difficult it is to actually make a start when you feel nervous about doing something that you see is overwhelming in someway. Like posting to your blog every day, you feel nervous that something you say will be taken the wrong way or that you may make a mistake somehow, but then the feeling that you are sitting on the sidelines too long can overcome you, so you make that start.
And as the famous quote from Ronald Reagan to Jimmy Carter during the Presidential Debate, “There you go again.”
The plea that comes from these pages is for peace and a world where everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve the basics. As with Reagan’s comment, the idea of the basics for everyone has been looked at as though the poor or lower income people would like to have this handed to them on some silver platter, as Mitt Romney said, “All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what … These are people who pay no income tax. … [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
No Mr. Romney, they believe that they should have an equal opportunity to achieve the “American Dream.” They don’t want a hand out and the majority of the 47% would not accept a hand out.
It is different when you are born into a privileged home. You don’t have a day wondering how you are going to make it today to pay your bills, make your rent payment or buy food to put on the table, if you have a dinning room table.
When you are privileged, you just focus on living your life and don’t have the stress that lack of money brings.
I did not come from a privileged home, and I am not financially wealthy currently. I have worked for every penny I have and strived to do better for myself, my family and those around me. Even when things were tough, I did not apply for food stamps, not that this is bad, or seek any government assistance, because I always felt I had the power to overcome the financial challenges.
I still believe in offering a safety net because if it wasn’t for my family, I may not be here today because of financial challenges I suffered in 2001. What if I didn’t have them?
Also, I sometimes wonder, why wasn’t I personally able to make myself financially set from the beginning on.
As I said in the quote, “How many average people own their home, outright? How many own their water production and treatment? How many own their power? Almost no one. In how many years? Thousands… This is why we have to do this,” we should, by now, ALL have our own safety net.
So in response to Romney, I say, “You want our dependence.”
When I told a person at a Home Show about the Water and Energy Independent Home, he said, “Your trying to free people,” and then cautioned me that this idea would not be liked by certain corporations and people.
From my understanding, they, who ever they are, want to keep us as need based consumers rather than choice based consumers. If we did not need anything because we already had it, like housing, power, food, water and fuel then we would be able to choose what we want and if we want it. Let’s take gasoline, for example, they would have to appeal to us rather than that being the other way around. They would have to tell me why I need their product and price it to where I would purchase it, if I chose to. What a concept!
I am working hard towards launching SustainabilityInitiative.org so that we can make this dream a reality for everyone but just like this blog, it’s a tough battle even when it is only with yourself.