No one owes you anything

At my high school (Pulaski) graduation in Milwaukee many years ago, the guest speaker was a local judge, Christ D. Seraphim.  Odd name I know – thought so even back then.  But one comment he made has served me well over the decades.  He instructed us with, “No one owes you anything.”  This advice, I know, is totally out of fashion now, but it served me well.

We now live in a world where many expect the government to give them opportunity, safety,  and success. It is also counter to the admonition that came just a few years later at the Presidential inauguration speech of John F. Kennedy, when he counseled us, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  Widely quoted for years afterward, this resonant call is hardly heard anymore.

Conditions in the USA have changed fundamentally from an era of independence and self-reliance to one of dependence and safe-spaces, and yes, variations of self-styled utopias*. 

In fact, I do not feel I’m presently in a safe-space when the youth of this time demand safety be granted gratuitously and success be guaranteed without condition, both without the slightest comprehension of what makes  either of them even remotely possible.

We live in a time where rights dominate strife, where confusion between freedom and liberty is rampant, where constitutional amendments can be selected or rejected by choice, and where, by fiat, there is a correct manner of life – no exceptions.  

*Indeed, Plato, in his The Republic, created a theology that simply will not go away, that of a caretaker priesthood of governance.